I had a Katana hilt in the past from Saberforge, but the wrapping on it’s gotten loose, the rayskin & powdercoating chipping…
It was extremely nice especially for the price, but Saberforge doesn’t appear to offer any of those things any more. Not sure if they’re Downsizing or Going Out of Business.
Now I’m looking to get another, but I don’t really know any businesses that specialize in that sort of thing, other than maybe Powdercoating & some Leather Wrapping (I’m looking for cloth). And I’d still need some nice looking Rayskin for it in a specialized color too.
Does anyone know anyone that does that sort of thing?
I’m guessing if I could get a custom Rayskin I could start from there & hand it off to someone that could Powdercoat it &/or Cloth Wrap it…
I don’t have a pic of the fading hilt, but I have a pic of what they were selling at the time
I had a dark purple version of the ray skin of this in a lighter purple cloth wrap with ‘sparkly purple dust’ powder coat for the metal bits -that gold plate dragon insignia & a black tsuba
I like your choices and that’s a pretty cool katana saber. Also, San Anton! A buddy is from there and I’d travel there as a kid. Ya know, I kinda miss Texas.
I feel like the powder coat would have to come first, since it’s done with heat and might damage the other aesthetics. You can also do a high quality spray can job over some automotive primer, then a top coat.
Ray skin of any color is painted, so you can DIY that to your liking. I trust this company for buying “samekawa”. They are very for real about Japanese martial arts products.
I mean in Texas I feel like there must be a leather worker or two who’d do the wrap job. If you have a local Ren Faire, I’d try the smiths and costumers.
You might spend a little but you’ll get a really cool result.
Yeah my cousins know some leather workers for their hats, belts, boots, & holsters. I’d like a cloth wrap, but I wouldn’t mind switching it up & going with leather if it’s someone that’s more familiar with leather.
I really like the powder coat jobs that Shane at SaberBay does, & he could probably be able to put that Shark Skin on a saber well enough for someone to do a professional leather wrap over it.
Any ideas of somewhere I could get a nice Katana style hilt to do all this to?
I gave that saber away for a Prize in a Charity Raffle for the Epilepsy Foundation. But I did consider trying to take it apart…
The majority of Lightsabers built by Saberforge (at least back then) were next to impossible to take apart due to the fact they used epoxy to secure the chassis & other parts in place instead of any type of screw system or it just fitting in place & held by the pommel or something.
I managed to get the parts of a Luke Skywalker saber out one time but I literately had to chip away parts of the chassis until it was all out, & that was only possible because the sound vent came off for a solid more accurate one.
I had no idea how to access the inside of this Katana. That pommel doesn’t unscrew, there’s no screws anywhere except for one M3 on the Tsuba. The only way to charge it or upload any data into it (assuming you got the GHv3) is that USB port. And it’s the same with all their lightsabers sadly (at least at that time) because there was no way to access any sort of kill switch.
That actually looks really nice! That price though has me thinking if it’s too good to be true though.
$500 for that & a Sheath!?!?!?
Do you know if it’s good enough to hold up to a re-wrap, & changing that Tsuba to hold a normal circular blade. Or is there a forum on here about those lightsabers?
For that stuff there’s elite collector groups in the book of faces and you’ll really need to do your homework as to which vendors are or are not trustworthy. @NitTheGrit may be able to offer some further suggestions or insight.
