Okay, with the location decided upon for the low battery indicator, I set it up in the drill press to drill the hole for the led:
After test fitting the led, I decided it needed to be a bit more flush mounted, so I looked through my drill bits and found one that was about the same diameter as the led's bezel...about 21/64th's, and counter drilled the hole:
The counter bore was a little tight, so I used the rotary tool to deburr and chamfer the hole a bit more, and went a little too far in one spot...now the brass is really showing right there....but the led is nice and flush with the outside of the hilt.
This is one of those times I really wish I had a mini-milling machine....counter sinking that led bezel would be a breeze with the correct bit.
There's plenty of room for it right there in the middle of the switch box area:
That looks about as good as I can get it, so I'll move on to the battery.
The first thing I did was solder leads to the positive of one battery, and the negative to the other. These are a real pain to solder to on the positive pole. I really wish they were available with tabs for soldering to. I added a another lead to the negative end of the front battery to act as the common lead for the pcb and began soldering everything up:
With all of the connections finished, I taped them together using packaging tape then slipped a piece of heatshrink tubing over the assembled battery pack, and used a hair dryer to shrink it tight after covering both ends with non-conductive material:
with it fully assembled, and tested for fit, I charged it up:
When it was all finished, it was putting out a perfect 8.2 volts.
Now I think I can start on wiring this saber up.....I'd like to get it mostly complete this weekend, but with the holiday tomorrow, and other family plans for the weekend, time may be short for working on this.