Hilt Process
I forget how long a given project has cost me--in terms of tyme, money, sanity, etc...--almost as soon as I finish. I believe that if I were to keep a more accurate record of such things I might never attempt to anything like it again. That said, I might guess fifty real hours start to finish, over the course of the three weeks leading up to Celebration II went into making this hilt;

1. I sketched the design. Over and over again. I kept drawing until I had a good feeling about the elements I wanted to include in the form.

2. I went through a few permutations of the sculpture. At one point I experimented with a curved sabre--not because of Count Dooku's hilt, this was before the release of Episode II.

3. I haplessly bumbled about trying to figure out the best way to reproduce my sculpture. My sulphur-based clay sculpture. I settled on silicon rubber, with the belief that a few coats of lacquer would render the sulphur inert.

4. Much to my horror, I learned that even encased in lacquer, the sulphur content of my clay had reacted with the silicon rubber, retarding its vulcanization. The salvaged result would be akin to attempting to capture the fine details of the human hand, and ending up with a casting of a hand with a 1/4" coat of wax.

5. I spent 8 hrs straight carving the details back into a wax casting made from the salvaged silicon mold.

6. After a week's research I finally found a foundry willing to work in aluminum. Industrial fabricators did aluminum regularly but where opposed to working on "art." Many sculpture foundries found the notion of working in aluminum repulsive, snobbishly preferring the luster of bronze. I brought my wax master in, and the foundry owner added gate/venting to the piece, and then invested it in a silicon/gypsum coating.

7. The following week I chased the piece that the foundry owner had cast for me (lost wax process.) I was allowed to use the foundry's pneumatic tools. Which was good, as it required the same force as a hammer to free the aluminum from the gypsum/silicon shell. And the gating/venting covered multiple details that needed to be reclaimed.

8. I cleaned the piece up more at home, drilled out and added the sockets for the phono and micro jacks. I found myself wishing I had made more allowance when the piece was still wax.

I still make plenty of mistakes in my projects. I often learn of much easier and effective techniques only after I complete a particularly exhaustive project. But that only inspires me to research more and attempt new challenges.

This hobby can be expensive. But I'll never flinch. I consider the cost to be both education and entertainment.

Be well,
Thomas