I am having a difficult time finding acrylic rods for lightsabers at a reasonable price. can someone shoot me a link where I can order some?

Price sounds about right. I bought mine 3-4 years ago for about $5. Don't forget to sand the ends round; flat ends always drive me nuts. You can get 8 lightsabers at around 1" each per rod.

They are a good idea but they eventually run out. I can only chop up so many Exceptional Jedi Apprentices for yellow lightsabers. And in the creation of Maces or Maras, you have to chop other Maras or Maces for purple lightsabers.

yea i would hate to have to buy 10 of each color it would be nice if someone had a handful i could buy off of someone

This is where I grabbed mine from, the honorable jak was kind enough to share the 1/16 dimension with me.

Fair point. I usually just buy a cheap miniature with the right lightsaber blade for the custom (I don't actually make any, painting is NOT my strong suit, but I commission them from Darthbane53 regularly. Thanks man!!!! ), but there haven't been any customs of multiple non-uniques yet.

I recall seeing several threads such as this over the years, its always good to see how innovation is happening on the lightsaber front. It would be nice to see all these conversations indexed and stickied, for quick ease of reference.

There are several methods for making custom lightsabers, personally I prefer to use translucent twist ties (found in packs of ~50 or by the roll at $2 stores, arts & crafts, florists and hardware) and then translucent paint to tint the colorless blades any desired color. The twist ties come in a round cross-sectional variety (standard lightsaber)
,

Above: Rolls such as these are generally inexpensive, and as the avg length lightsaber blade is ~23mm, often make a lot of customs.

and a wider flat cross-section variety (blade widened mod).


Above: This wider variety is commonly found with packaging.

The primary advantage to the twist tie approach is the twist tie can be easily incorporated into a wireframe (for scratchbuilds). a secondary benefit is that, with wirecutters, the translucent twist ties can be quickly stripped and placed directly into a custom (very strong and quick vs gluing on an acrylic rod). The best advantage to translucent twist ties? They're very cheap, and can often be found for free* with toy packaging, bread and many other kinds of packaging.

The handswap method/cut and reposition method is also effective, primarily for the high grade finish which can be achieved.

Ive also seen some recycled plastic methods, which are useful for creating special effects such as a lightsaber swipe or a lightsaber throw.

Do you have a picture up for her? I looked on your thread but didn't see it; I'm always happy to look at customs of Darth Traya!

Oooh, that is cool!

I took a risk on a very high value piece. It turned out cool. She had a lot of brace points for the plastic to adhere to.
Here's a link to my full mini gallery. There are a few more examples of my Lightsaber effects.
http://s79.beta.photobucket.com/user/markedman247/library/One%20Shots