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Lightsaber Builders Blog

How to build a Lightsaber
from a vacuum cleaner

This How-To is a reprint from

Star Wars Trader - NZ , www.geocities.com/starwarstrader_nz

He did a GREAT job and I asked him to allow me to reprint it here.

This How-To was written by a guy from New Zealand so some of the term used area a bit confusing to us Americans.

For Translation Purposes,

15 cm = about 6 inches
24 cm = about 9.6 inches
A "torch" is a flashlight

How to Build a lightsaber from a vacuum cleaner

After running an article on "How to make a lightsaber", i decided that i would take up the challenge myself. I had a look about the house and garage and found a few lengths of tubing that might be of use but i wasn't so sure that this would do, so i took another look in the garage and an old vacuum cleaner that was ready to be dumped caught my attention. I examined the tubing and the plastic fittings and said to myself, this is exactly what im looking for. A "Husky 1500 Hoover Vacuum Cleaner"

lets examine the parts of the vacuum cleaner

Above you can see the basic disassembled parts of a common vacuum cleaner tube and fittings, we have a ribbed flexible gray tubing, two chrome tubes which are joining halves and two plastic fittings. One plastic fitting connects the flexible tube to the chrome tube and the other fitting connects the chrome tubing to the floor brush. all the parts are light yet strong and fairly easy to cut.

Begin by cutting away what will be used

Lets start by cutting away the first plastic fitting, this is the end which rotates and connects the floor head to the chrome tubing. I used a simple but useful hobby saw which easily cut through the plastic tubing. Then the same was done with the handle end of the plastic tubing, i wanted only part of the curved shaft with the internal sleeve intact as this would be used as the bottom end of the Lightsaber handle. The ribbed rubber tubing is easily cut away with a handy craft knife, i removed both plastic fittings from either end. I cut to size 15cm of rubber tubing, the internal diameter of the rubber tubing matches the diameter of the chrome tubing almost perfectly. Next i measured 24cm of chrome tubing and clamped it down so i could cut it as straight as possible, the tubing cuts much easier than expected. Ok next you need to clean up all the pieces, you can use a file on the metal tube ends or even a rough 40 grit sand paper held against a narrow length of wood. I used the sandpaper to straighten the cuts made to the plastic fittings and a pair of scissors to trim the edges of the rubber tube. The plastic fitting which connected to the floor head was then pushed onto one end of the chrome tube and cut at an angle, this would be the top end of the lightsaber and where the emitter would normal be housed. So far so good, we now have all four basic fittings for the handle..

Cleaning up what we have so far

Above you can see all four parts after they have cleaned and set aside for the next job. The plastic fittings were sanded with a light grade sand paper to remove any bits of protruding plastic bits and to get rid of that shine, this will look awful at first but with care to sand in one direction only ( length wise ) the fittings will turn out ok and wont resemble their former selves so much. The insides of both the plastic and chrome tube were thoroughly cleaned with a bottle brush as they were filthy from years of sucking up dust.

Useful parts from the vacuum's main body

now depending on what kind of vacuum you have you are sure to find a bunch of different bits and pieces on or in the main vacuum body itself. So lets begin to take it apart best we can, you may need screwdrivers to do this or in some cases use a bit of brute force. Allot of parts are easily removed as it may have been designed this way for cleaning etc. Be careful of the dust inside if you have allergies, there can be a terrible mess inside one of these units. Above you can see a small tube center of the vacuum's lid, this is the full bag indicator. It is easily removed without need to loosen screws or such. Place all the parts that look good to one side, keep this piece handy for later.. Here we have the vacuum's power switch and most of these will be a push button similar to this one. It may be mounted with small screws or a collar nut. Put this somewhere safe and be careful not to cut away to much wire near to the terminals at this point incase you want to use them again. Ok the last part you will probably remove will be the electric motor itself, this may have useful terminals or washes that you could also. Lets pull it apart as see what we have, i had to use a socket set to remove the fan and I later used a screw driver to pry open the aluminum housing. In there i found a couple of large washes and a spacer. The electrics and core was discarded although i kept back the brush fittings just in case. I was now left with a small pile of bits and pieces to sort through and think about. I kept parts of plastic and rubber incase i should use them later for covering over end pieces. I discarded the screws as i will use more shapely nuts and bolts later on in the construction.

Lets start building

Ok, firstly i pushed the front end plastic fitting onto the chrome tube and rummaged through a box of assorted nuts and bolts finding this little beauty. Its a chrome button with a small threaded shaft, it can be used not only to hold the plastic sleeve in place it will function as the sabers focus control. I added a rubber tap washer to it also which will mold itself around the tube very nicely. I clamped the plastic end into the drill vice and drilled a clean hole through both the plastic and the metal pipe. Now you can see the bolt and washer attached firmly, remember the full bag indicator i removed from the vacuum cleaners body, now it has a new use. This will eventually become the lightsabers emitter and will house the light bulb for lighting things up.. The spring and the red plunger were removed leaving only the empty casing and a rubber stopper on either end. Lets do the other fitting, firstly the tube needed to be solid but not heavy so i chose to fill both ends of the fitting by using some pine dowelling glued securely via a glue gun. I pushed the dowel into the fitting as far as it would go and marked it for trimming, then i did the same again to the opposite side. It had to be in two pieces because the fitting has a curve to it. I used the glue gun again to seal the edges of the dowel to the plastic fitting which looks kinda raw but you wont be able to see this when its finished anyway. I sealed off both ends in the same way and then sanded the bottom end flush with the plastic, this was so i could next add the two large washes. I clamped the plastic end piece into the work bench and drilled a hole into the dowel, this would be to secure the two washes i found inside the vacuum's electric motor. The washes were just right diameter to match the plastic fitting. I fastened the washes down with a large wood screw, between the washes was the spacer i found inside the electric motor, a small piece of rubber tubing was cut and pushed inside the spacer to stop the pieces from moving about.

Now lets figure out the switch mounting

Amongst the few parts i chose to use was a plastic slot i removed from the bottom of the vacuum's body and this rather good little push button switch. I decided the two might work out well together and marked out the first hole to be drilled on the chrome tube. I used a bit of thin foam to protect the chrome tube while it was clamped inside the drill vice and drilled a small hole that the plastic slot would be attach to. A rather large hole needed to be drilled just above this one for the collar of the switch to pass through, indent where you will drill the hole first by tapping a small dent with a nail punch, this will help center the drill bit and stop it from slipping about while drilling. You can see how the plastic slot and switch might attach to the chrome tube a little better in this picture, the large hole drilled into the plastic slot will be used to fit over the buttons collar once it has been fitted. Ok this is much more like it, you can see all the parts are taking shape now, a small red cap has been glued to the top of the push button to give it the proper look. The next step is to work out the lighting and electrics..

The tricky part, adding the electrics

The next part really depends on how good you are with wiring, i tried a few different idea's all with their own set of pros and cons and in the end i did it the simplest way possible. I took the full bag indicator and broke it apart so i could look at placing a bulb inside. In this picture you can see i tried at first a small reed bulb, i could have placed this center and held it in place using a electric glue gun. The connections of any small bulbs can be delicate so try not to bend them around to much or they can break off. I glued the reed bulb into a small reflector that was from an old torch, now i could have used a LED or "Light Emitting Diode" in place of the bulb as you can get super bright LED's that are actually brighter, but for now lets stick with the simple bulb. The connection to the bulb was coated with the hot glue, this would protect the delicate wires from breaking. The switch was also soldered in place along the double strand wire that i happened to have laying around. The thickness of the wire should be as thin as possible as less energy would be consumed during operation, the wire i chose was something similar to speaker wire which is a little bit thick. The inside of the full bag indicator was filled with small blue beads, i didn't want just a plain light so i tried the beads for added color. Ok now it was time to thread the wires through the chrome tube and leaving enough free wire so that i could assemble the other end pieces. Check how much wire you need before soldering it all together. This is another good reason to use thin wire, larger wire will take up more room and becomes bunched up within the chrome tubing. A narrow band of filtering cloth was used to wrap around the base of the emitter. The filter cloth was removed from the vacuum's air intake cover and is quite strong, it was firmly attached to the emitters base using the hot glue gun. This would ensure a tight fit but not a permanent attachment, everything should be easy to take apart again. Now you can see the front of the lightsaber complete, the emitter sits snug inside the plastic fitting and the brass nut you can see on the end was added from a broken key ring laser pointer. The red cap on the switch was from a red marker pen, these two parts weren't from the vacuum i admit but you are allowed to make compromises when it comes to the decorations.

What about the power source

Ok, how do we power it and store the cells inside the chrome tube, the bulb that i chose has a max rating of about 3 volts so i don't want to exceed this or risk blowing the bulb, two 1.5 volt batteries would do the trick and "C" size battery's would fit the diameter of the chrome tube best. They would also add some extra weight to the handle but would need to be securely placed inside,we don't want anything rattling about and we should be able to change them easily without using a soldering iron. I had two soft springs that i removed from inside the vacuum's casing and i soldered these to a couple of large washers, i did this so to give the springs something to stand straight against and i could easily solder the wires along side them. The washes should be cleaned with some sandpaper firstly to achieve a good bond then some flux was applied to the metal to prepare it. The washers became very hot after awhile which allowed the solder to move more freely, be very careful not to touch the washers until cool. Now i had a plastic tube that was the perfect diameter to hold the "C" size battery's, it was sealed at one end and had a plastic cap, the only thing i had to do was shorten it as there is limited room inside the chrome tube. You can see that the washes were chosen also for there size, this would insure a good fit. One washer and spring was slipped into the tube with its wire passing through a small hole at the end of the cylinder. The springs were soft but had adequate pressure to make good connections with the battery's terminals, you can see how the bottom wire trails on the outside of the cylinder and then passes through another hole near the top just before the cap. The battery wires were then soldered to the wires connecting to the switch and light bulb, a blob of hot glue was used to insulate the welds preventing any short circuits. Again i wished i had thinner wire at the time as i knew i might have some trouble with wires bunching inside the chrome tube, if electronic sound effects were used there would not be any room for such a battery pack and a 9volt transistor battery would have been used instead. Ok with the battery pack in place we could finally fit the hand grip, this used to be part of the vacuums flexible hose and was the perfect diameter for the handle, it simply slides onto the chrome tube with only a bit of twisting. Now for the bottom end fitting, i had to cut another inch or so from this to make room for the battery pack. See how the fitting has that slight bend to it, a bit like count dooku's lightsaber, this pushes onto the end firmly.

Now for the great unveiling!!

Ta dah!, a lightsaber from a vacuum cleaner. The front end with its emitter and the count dooku style back end.. A nice little wooden rack is added and you have a real display piece, it cost me almost nothing to build it and it sits proudly on the shelf for all to see.