# How would you construct a light saber?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 16, 2004, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547 "2004-03-16T00:30:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@laughingpiranha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laughingpiranha)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/1 "2004-03-16T00:30:12Z")
How would you construct a light saber?
Any suggestions?
Maybe an extendable heating fillament?
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### Author:  [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/2 "2004-03-16T01:55:12Z")
-
-
- I’d just go with a colored plastic tube fastened to the end of a flashlight, myself.
…
- Of course, if you want that fancy reverb sound, then it gets more complicated.
~
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### Author:  [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/3 "2004-03-16T01:58:05Z")
You start with the flash to a '50s Graphlex Speed Graphic camera, IIRC.
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### Author:  [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/4 "2004-03-16T02:01:53Z")
[How a Light Saber Works](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/LightSaber/LightSaber.html)
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### Author:  [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/5 "2004-03-16T02:05:12Z")
-The Force.
-Dude, that’s your answer to everything.
What is that from? I wanta say something Kevin Smith.
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### Author:  [@sciguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciguy)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/6 "2004-03-16T08:34:29Z")
> [@Wolfian](#):
>
> -The Force.
> -Dude, that’s your answer to everything.
>
> What is that from? I wanta say something Kevin Smith.
It’s definitely Clerks, but for the life of me I can’t remember if it was the movie or the animated series.
…googling…
Survey says: “Clerks: the animated series” (oddly enough with Dante giving the line “The force”, that strikes me as more a Randall saying, although Dante probably doesn’t use “dude” quite as much).
Um, what was the question?
The chances of making a glowing blade extend from a handle is pretty slim (even without the nigh-unstoppable cutting power). There are several places you can get saber handles with glowing bulbs for a blade, though.
Me, I’d rather go with a [Variable sword](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=58), it’s much more straight forward (well, as long as you can get your hands on a Slaver stasis field).
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### Author:  [@RandomLetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandomLetters)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/7 "2004-03-16T08:43:43Z")
Maybe you could use a magnetic field(in blade shape) to contain a bunch of super-heated plasma.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/8 "2004-03-16T11:41:25Z")
They’ll see you coming a mile off with one of those things; what you want is a _Dark_ Sabre.
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### Author:  [@peterW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peterW)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/9 "2004-03-16T14:01:47Z")
I had one of the original toy light sabres when Star Wars first came out. It would have been great if I had realized how much it would be worth back then, but when you’re a kid, you just want to go Jedi on a few asses.
A few years ago, there was a special on one of the learning channels about the creator of the toy. He said it was simply made of a flashlight and a golf tube.
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### Author:  [@Chastain86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chastain86)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2004, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-construct-a-light-saber/234547/10 "2004-03-16T14:29:51Z")
> [@sciguy](#):
>
> It’s definitely Clerks, but for the life of me I can’t remember if it was the movie or the animated series.
>
> …googling…
>
> Survey says: “Clerks: the animated series” (oddly enough with Dante giving the line “The force”, that strikes me as more a Randall saying, although Dante probably doesn’t use “dude” quite as much).
>
> Um, what was the question?
[slight hijack]
The actual sequence of lines is from the Clerks animated series. Ahem:
**Randal:** And the lightsaber, you turn it on and it goes yea-high. How does it know when to stop?
**Dante:** Uhh…The Force?
**Randal:** Man, that’s your answer to **everything.**
[hijack over, return to your homes]