The greatest Star Wars lightsabers in the world are built by fans

I’m in a suburb 30 miles outside of Sacramento, California, and Yoda’s teaching me how to fight with a lightsaber.

In this particular case, Yoda is the online nickname for Michael Murphy, a 43-year-old artist that makes his living building high-end custom lightsabers — including the ones we’re using — but that doesn’t make the lesson any less intense. I step forward, my blue blade cutting through the air with an unmistakeable thrumm. My blow is easily parried, our sabers clashing hot white. He pivots, blade twirling behind his back as he executes a 360-degree spin that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Ewan McGregor pull off.

He swings straight for my head, and as I bring my saber up to block I can’t help but think two things: This is probably what Daisy Ridley felt like, and I have to get me one of these.

"I guess somewhere deep down I always wanted to be a toymaker," Murphy tells me across the island in his kitchen. Except for the rack of lightsabers by the couch and the detailed blueprints and sample materials sitting on the counter, it feels like any suburban home in America. "Even though I originally wanted to build cars, those are just big toys. More dangerous. More money." His eyes shift mischievously, and he laughs. "This is something that’s much more unique."

Unique doesn’t even begin to cover it. For the past 10 years, Murphy’s made his living building LED-powered lightsabers, and the internal chassis that make them tick. The forums on his website, FX Sabers, are part of a thriving custom lightsaber scene, where designers, engineers, "sabersmiths," and DIY tinkerers all collaborate in the name of building the ultimate Star Wars movie prop.

For Murphy it started in 2005, when he was hit with back-to-back medical injuries and found himself unable to work, couch-ridden for more than a year. "One of the things I coulddo was get online," he tells me. At the time, the internet was still obsessed with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and a company called Master Replicas had set a new standard for collectible sabers with primitive light-up blades and sound. "My son had found some pictures of the Master Replica things online, in this little dinky discussion forum where people were talking about stuff."

Michael Murphy of FX Sabers.

That "dinky discussion forum" was FX Sabers, and as Murphy and son bonded over lightsabers, he joined a community that was initially focused on helping owners repair and upgrade the licensed collectables. He quickly took on a more active role, eventually taking over the site entirely — that’s when he started going by "Master Yoda" — just as the community’s ambitions were beginning to grow.

At the time, hardcore fans had already been taking matters into their own hands for years. Connecting through sites like The Replica Prop Forum, people would break down precisely how movie props were built so they could recreate screen-accurate items for everything from Star Trek to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The same thing was happening with lightsabers, with some pioneering individuals going so far as to sell their own inspired-by designs or build replicas that were even more accurate than the licensed products. Murphy’s personal obsession, however, was the original Luke Skywalker saber, referred to in the community as The Graflex.

Three eras of Graflex lightsabers.

It’s important to remember that when George Lucas made Star Wars back in the ‘70s, it was a fairly low-budget film, and everything from the X-wings to the blasters were made from cannibalized model kits and other found parts. One of the items that the production had the hardest time nailing down were the lightsabers, until set decorator Roger Christian came across a box of camera flashes from the 1930s and ‘40s. The company that made them? Graflex.

The flash’s odd combination of metal swoops, curves, and clips instantly called to mind the retro-future aesthetic the film was going for. Christian stuck a strip of bubbles pilfered from an old Texas Instruments calculator into the flash’s clamp, added a D-ring at the bottom, and topped it off with some grips. That was the original lightsaber.

'STAR WARS' FANS HAVE BECOME NOTORIOUS IN THE CAMERA-COLLECTING WORLD

By the early 2000s, Star Wars disciples were tracking down old Graflex flashes to such a degree that they’d become notorious in the camera-collecting community, but those mostly ended up as bladeless hilts that would just sit on a shelf and look pretty. Murphy, however, was interested in taking the electronics from the latest toys and putting them inside the vintage flash for a replica that could be used for dueling or cosplay. Creating a screen-accurate vintage lightsaber complete with light-up blade and interactive effects demanded an internal system custom-designed for the 70-year-old antiques.

"It was something that was born out of my previous radio control car experience, where you need to have a chassis that can house your electronics," he says. "One night, about 3 o’clock in the morning, I was coming up with what I wanted to put in the hilt, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa was on The History Channel. And I said, ‘Well that’s what I need to do. I need to take all of my flattened [RC car chassis] ideas, and turn them into a cylindrical [system].’" The resulting combination of aluminum poles and plastic discs provided a rigid structure that protected and cushioned the electronics in the sabers — but most importantly for Murphy’s own contributions to the hobby, it would provide room for what is known as a crystal chamber.