Ok, so here's my jury-rigged milling setup. I chuck up an endmill bit to the lathe, and clamp my stock into the toolpost. Might be a tad unorthodox, but it works for what I need for the time being.
Here are the other two blanks with the straight low side cut. This side will sit on the emitter can surface, so it has to be straight. You can also see the can hook there on the end of the fin.
And here we go with the hacksawing rough cuts, sanding and filing to fit.
Another night, another piece. Three fins almost done, threaded, notched.
Three more fins cut. I still have to shave a tad of metal off these, and cut the notch for the hook on the emitter can. Then drilling, tapping and polish.
Here I am cutting the slots for the fin hooks into the emitter caps.
And this is my test trial for the switch lever... Using only three files and a drill press for the hole, it didn't take too long to round everything off and cut the slots.
Like this, this is my first version of the switch. I will probably redesign as I go, but it's a start.
Not too shabby for only using three files... I might redo this piece.
At this point I got my batteries in from TCSS, and am assembling the battery packs for the saber. I begin with scuffing up the ends, so that the solder has something to hold on to, and then clamping two batteries into my panavise grooves so they're parallel. A couple drops of solder to "pre tin" the contact points, and I flip em over and do the same to the other sides.
After soldering a short piece of solid wire across the terminals on each set, you can now see the two sides to one battery pack. Four AAA rechargable batteries give me 4.8 volts.
I clamp them up again in the panavise, and run one jumper wire between the two sets, and then run my positive and negative wires up through the middle of the pack, and to the corresponding terminals. I'll need two battery packs just alike. One for each side of the saber.
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