November 2007

“I see you have constructed your own lightsaber…”

These famous words uttered by Darth Vader to his son, Luke, after his surrender to him on the forest moon of Endor in Return of The Jedi echoed in my head last night as, for the second time, I removed the plastic shielding to repair my sons plastic version of the Jedi’s weapon of choice.

I had already found that my soldering iron was no longer working and therefore would not re-solder the broken wire that stretched from the negative battery terminal - and that the meagre heat from a few swan vesta matches and some excess superglue were no substitute for such a device - only making it much worse.

I had to Jedi-Force my way to the shed and extract an old plug from which I used the fuse terminal to join the end of the wire to the other end of the LED light part of the blade. I then had to jam it all together with some tin foil, shield the 2 terminals from touching each other with a piece of cardboard salvaged from a free pack of crayons given to us at a local resturant (to keep the kids busy - not to eat!) and screw it all back together.

No doubt by the time I return home from work today, the lightsaber will again not be working and will be destined for the bin - and many tears will be destined for my childs cheeks…

What do you expect for £4 though!

ps. As an aside to this story of DIY lightsaber repair - I had a thought. Why does’nt someone invent superglue that conducts electricity - therefore acting as some sort of cold-solder type substance. If I see you on Dragons Den with this idea - I am going to kick your ass - but not with a £4 plastic Jedi weapon.