Hi all, I am currently working on a saber hilt that has Mara Jade-ish bars. Instead of
making 10 to 12 bars that are 5/16 to 3/8" wide by 1/16" to 1/8" thick (you can't buy thin flat metal bars at those widths folks... at least not that I could find) I decided to try something different... make them fake. Below are pics and a tutorial on how to make them should anyone be interested. First, the pics...
1/32 of an inch, from the ID of the pipe outward (which is between where the gaps between the bars come together in the point of a "V" and the inside hole going through the pipe), will be covered by the parts that attach to each end of that pipe thus helping to create the illusion that they are bars attached to a pipe via screws and not part of the pipe itself.
To pull off the illusion that the bars are mounted to round metal, I had to make it look like the bottom edges of the bars touch eachother. To do this I used a 60 degree drill mill bit to mill each slot. I used aluminum pipe at 1-5/8" OD by 1-3/8" ID and milled each slot at about 3/32" deep. Because that only leaves the pipe at 1/32" deep, I decided to reinforce the pipe by lathing down some 1-1/2" OD by 1-1/4" ID aluminum tubing to 1-3/8" OD. I inserted the pipe before milling the slots to help prevent crushing of the pipe in the vise once some of the slots were milled.
Using the OD of pipe that I did, 12 bars worked best. They are each about 5/16" wide on top.
A nice upside to this method is that the bars are curved on the outside instead of flat, thus providing a more comfortable grip. Anywho, just thought I'd share this idea with you.
Topic: Fake Mara Jade Bars (Read 5366 times)