This was never seen on film, but I've heard that it was touched upon in the comics? Reguardless, I always loved the thought that after the events in ESB, someone, either Lord Vader, one of his henchmen...or maybe even a bounty hunter, retrived Luke's hand and saber as either a present or for safe-keeping. I've had this project on the back-burner for months and just recently got everything in place to finish it up.
The frame is made of wood and had a recessed panel which formed a "basin" in the face. This was constructed by my father-in-law, a master woodworker. There are also panels inset into the sides which would later hold greeblies and lights. All woodwork was sealed with wood filler, allowed to dry and sanded smoothe.
I constructed a lightsaber out of assorted materials, built with ESB measurements. The hand was part of a Halloween prop, one of those big vinyl severed arms with the bloody stump.
Since I don't know a thing of wiring LED's, I used a module that's meant for t-shirts. Say you have a shirt or sweater with a big Christmas tree on it...you could use this module for the lights. Simply drilled a few holes and covered them with various bits. Here you can see two lights difused with hotglue. I laid the two nozzles face down and applied hotglue to the interior. When it cooled off, I just pried them off the glass surface they were resting on, and the effect was a flat light difusing surface.
A cookie for the person who can spot what the greeblies came from.
The saber was inserted into the hand and set aside. I then poured close to 7 pounds of plaster into the basin. I then quickly inserted the hand/saber into the plaster pool and worked it with a spatula, making dips and peeks in random areas, and building the plaster up around the edges of the hand/saber.
Since the hand was made of vinyl, and I was worried it wouldn't take spray paint well, I gave it several coats of gesso and latex paint. When this dried, I gave the entire piece a coat of primer, followed by a coat of gloss black, coated with 4 applications of Krylon metalic silver. When dry, this was given a coat of gloss acrylic sealer. The plaster/hand/saber area was given a wash of black acrylic to bring out the details.
When all was said and done, the whole thing probably weighs close to 10 pounds. I was going to display it on a wall, but that would call for a 5 inch lag bolt to be inserted into a stud. I'll have to come up with a different means of display.
"How lucky are the few who know where they belong."
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