Here we have the pieces together, sans D ring and grip screws. Along with it's older brother.

Speaking of grip screws, I believe I will add those now. First, I had to trim out some of the rubber around the holes drilled in the grips. They were not perfectly aligned left to right, so I had to widen them slightly. I also used my scribe to dot in where my centerpoint for the holes will be, it's that barely visible indentation on the metal under the rubber. This is where my screw hole will be drilled, and I made sure they were the correct distance to the back of the hilt with my micrometer.

Now comes a picky step, making sure the holes are drilled properly each time. I set my clamp to close up just outside a grip strip, and put some tape down to keep things from scratching. The metal tube sits on the vice claws, and that keeps it level, and aligned. On my tape, I marked the spot where I slide the grip back to with a pencil.

Once the holes are drilled, and all the shavings cleaned off, I tap them out with the 6-32 tap, making sure to keep it level and straight. One tip here is to not let it tap all the way, to let the screw work a little harder to get in there in the end, that is if you're doing what I am doing, and not using the nuts that came with the screws. The reason I am doing that is that my chassis from the ANH saber will fit in here, and I can't have all those nuts and screws taking up room, or else the battery can won't slide in. This also means I have to shorten my screws at some point, but that's not too hard.

Once I have the grip screws tapped and installed, I come to the replica Kobold Flash D ring assembly. This piece almost fits flush against the hilt, but I will have to file off the corners a bit to get it to fit better.

Taking a pic of this was hard, so parden the slight blurriness, but this is how I mark where the holes will be for the D ring mount. I press in with my scribe to get it "ballparked" then go in and measure and make corrections. Once I am satisfied with where my holes will go, I drill, tap and install the D ring mount.

I had a minor calamity when assembling this, but nothing a slight burr off with the dremel can't fix. But word to the wise, measure twice, cut once, MAKE SURE what you're about to do is lined up properly. I accidentally indexed my D ring incorrectly, but it was fixable without any exterior clue as to what happened.

Here is a shot of the hilt with most of the exterior pieces installed. I lack the PCB Card strip that goes in the clamp, and once I get a little further along, I'll order the blade adapter and machine it to fit my chassis, get a new pololu latching switch for this setup, and this little fellow will be done! (Until I decide to do more) Stay tuned, more to come!

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