A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Benji Graham tinkered with his lightsaber.
The particular model he’s holding — one of the dozens on display around his bedroom — looks like a steampunk flashlight that was assembled from pieces of scrap metal, nuts and bolts leftover from other projects and strips of leather that were forgotten out in the sun for a few decades. When he turns it on it sparks and hums, shooting out a colored beam that appears and sounds powerful, but thankfully could not actually dismember anyone.
This saber is not a literal energy sword, but a functional art piece, a “Star Wars” movie replica, that Graham has spent the past four years learning how to build from scratch and bring to life. It contains around 30 parts: an aluminum hilt, a lithium-ion battery, a soundboard loaded with effects, speakers, crystals, lights and a polycarbonate tube, among others.
He’s gotten so good at crafting these faux weapons he’s become a leading voice in the custom saber design world, an international subculture of “Star Wars” enthusiasts who fanboy over Graham’s tinkering skills and the warm, empowering way he talks about fictional plasma-based combat.
“A lot of people share the same kind of passion for this stuff,” said Graham, who sports a thick beard, Vans and a University of Alabama hoodie. “There’s something about a lightsaber when you cut it on. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you’ve never seen ‘Star Wars.’ Everyone turns into a kid again.”
EPISODE 1: THE RISE OF GRAHAM
Benji Graham, 32, grew up a Coast Guard brat. The youngest of four, he moved around a lot as a child, bouncing between Alaska, California, Washington state and Guam. His dad, a big George Lucas fan, often played his movies for the kids. Graham recalls he and his siblings painting broken broomsticks to resemble lightsabers and running around pretending to cut each other’s hands off.
“The first movie I can ever remember seeing was ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’” Graham said. “I’ll always remember the sound of Luke cutting [his lightsaber] on for the first time. It’s captivating.”
Later, when Graham was a teenager, the family settled in Mobile. He was shy but made friends doing what he loved: skateboarding, playing the guitar and geeking out over movies. He turned into the guy who would walk up to people standing alone at a party, chatting with them to make them feel comfortable and welcome. Being forced to relocate a lot throughout his life, he knew what it felt like to be an outsider.
After high school, he moved to New Orleans and ran an art gallery. He returned home a few years later and took on freelance work making props for indie films and operating the cameras for commercials and music videos.
“I was always going to find my way to lightsabers,” he said. “It’s the number one most recognizable prop in film history.”
Lightsabers are so recognizable, he said, a few years ago he tried to fly cross-country with one and warned TSA agents he was packing plasma. He didn’t want them to mistake it for a pipe bomb. They asked him to open his backpack and pull it out — so they could turn it on and play fight with it.
EPISODE 2: THE FORCE AWAKENS
Lightsaber enthusiasts use their sabers a number of ways. They play with them like toys; they keep them pristine and display them like art (these sabers are called “Shelf Queens”); they ruggedize them and use them in full-contact, kenjutsu-like duels (one sparring league is called “Saber Legion”); and they perform choreography with them like flow artists.
There are hundreds of lightsabers for them to choose from in the “Star Wars” universe. There are lightsabers from the movies, from the books and from the video games, and they all have different looks and blade colors and produce various sounds. Some are immediately recognizable, such as the personal sabers of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Replicas of these sabers are sold in widely available kits and are machined to be nearly identical to the props. Buy the kit, put it together and you’ve got Vader’s saber.
Others are lesser known and harder to track down. One, for example, is from the book “I, Jedi.” In the novel, a character makes his saber’s hilt out of a speeder bike, or motorcycle, handle. This rarer kit produces a saber that resembles a handlebar. When you twist and turn the assembled piece, it replicates speeder bike sound effects such as accelerating and blasting.
Or you can step even further out of the canon and design a saber to your exact specifications, something wholly unique. You can take pieces from the pre-made kits and mix and match them in different ways, adding and subtracting bits as you see fit. Online stores such as the Custom Saber Shop (thecustomsabershop.com) sell modular parts — batteries, blade plugs, pommels, wires — offering unlimited design variations.
Custom sabers (“lightsaber” is a term trademarked by Lucas Films) can also be bought, fully assembled and installed, which can require a year’s lead time and cost well over $1,000. This is how Graham got his first saber, four years ago. He ordered it on eBay and got hooked on the fantasy of it, its possibilities.
He began watching YouTube tutorials on how to build his own and started rummaging for parts everywhere he could find them, from Home Depot to Hobby Lobby. (This is how the films’ props departments also made sabers; Skywalker’s weapon, which has slight variations from movie to movie, was assembled from pieces of a vintage Graflex camera flash, a calculator and a refrigerator.)
“In ‘Star Wars,’ a lot of the props are old,” Graham said. “They’re beat up, they’ve been passed down or hidden. So you can make a lightsaber out of almost anything. It turns into a scavenger hunt.”
He saw it as a mechanical and electrical puzzle, kind of like building a gaming computer. It was intimidating at first, but the more he played around with his soldering iron, Dremel and butane torch, the more advanced his skills became. He turned his corner desk into a workshop and experimented by making sabers for other people, too, only charging a few hundred bucks for parts and labor, and building up an impressive portfolio that could rival the visual resumé of an experienced tattoo artist.
And the more he got involved in the online saber communities, the quicker his skills and laid-back personality made him a valuable asset to the fantastical makerspace, which, oddly enough, could often feel overly exclusionary and serious.
EPISODE 3: A NEW HOPE
There was a time when you’d be nervous to talk about unique interests like saber-building. Would your friends and family make fun of you? Would you ever get a date? Today, with the advent of specialized online communities, we know there is nothing to be nervous about. Everyone has unique interests.
“You would think it’d be pretty hard to get a girlfriend when you have a ton of lightsabers, but I mean if you play your cards right and you got the skills, you could do it. It’s possible,” Graham said, laughing. “I think the passion is what girls like, as nerdy as it is.”
His own girlfriend, who Graham knew in high school and recently reconnected with, encourages his hobby. She hadn’t even seen a single “Star Wars” movie before they started dating.
Subcultures no longer have to be hidden underground, but they’re often still hidden away, inside members-only private Facebook groups. These are safe spaces, where saber lovers can ask questions, share memes and post celebratory final-build photos without fear of mockery, theoretically. There are even different groups dedicated to each different hilt.
But the groups can be insular and high stress as well. Experienced builders can get annoyed by new builders who ask elementary questions and show off work that could be considered sloppy. Graham, though, who moderates some of these groups, is a reassuring voice here, helping to uplift these community members.
“Some people will be really critical,” he said. “I don’t take myself seriously at all. That’s one of the things a lot of people tend to forget. Dude, we’re all making lightsabers. I don’t care if it’s a little messy. That’s ‘Star Wars.’ Look at C-3PO. It looks like a mess.”
Members appreciate him and new builders gravitate to him. In one 2,000-plus member Facebook group, Universal Lightsaber Community, his posts regularly receive more than 100 comments.
“Just want to say to everyone in this group thank you for keeping this hobby enjoyable and positive,” he posted recently. “I know to some people in other groups they are maybe shy or don’t want to share their sabers for fear of some form of ridicule or what have you and it makes me proud to be a part of a group that has a zero tolerance for that kind of toxicity.”
In an effort to spread his positivity to a wider audience, last month he started a YouTube channel called Nerfherder Customs. In a series of light-hearted videos he records on his iPhone 6, he shows off builds he’s completed and offers demos, reviews and tutorials.
“With my channel I want to reach out and actually talk to somebody,” he said. “I know way too much about this junk.”
The friends he makes on the internet can translate into the real world, too. He is often recognized at comic-con or “Star Wars” events by people who he has chatted with for years online. And people frequently approach him at local bars to ask about his lightsaber work, even when he’s playing a gig with his metal band.
“It’s gratifying and kind of addicting to get that praise from people,” he said. “[Building sabers] rewards your self-esteem. It teaches you how things work. And then what’s fun is realizing how simple it is.”
EPISODE 4: RETURN OF THE JEDI
Today Graham shares a West Mobile home with his parents, sister, brother-in-law and infant niece, who is fascinated by his glowing designs. Inspired by Graham’s work, his sister has also taken up crafting, using his tools and supplies to make art projects for her daughter. The siblings will often spend hours together in Hobby Lobby.
“So many people know me there,” Graham said. “I’ll end up talking to the ladies at the craft table for like 20 minutes just showing them on my phone all the pictures and stuff that I’m working on. There’s a lot of excitement in it.”
He’s frequently asked to build custom sabers, but the commissions he likes to take on these days are for people who he knows would get a lot of use out of them. He’s not over here building paperweights. He also makes saber display boxes, which he lines with velvet and brands with symbols of the Jedi Order.
“I’m not doing it because I’m looking to make a lot of money,” he said. “I could, but this is just my hobby. This’ll never interfere with my real life. It’s my outlet. If my hobby turned into a full-time job, I’d probably start to hate it.”
Graham considers lightsaber building the gift that keeps on giving; there’s always something new to learn. He’s now trying to teach himself 3D printing (to make his own chassis and display stands), acid etching (to put designs or symbols on the hilts) and coding (to program his own soundboards), among other skills.
And then he wants to apply the skills he’s already learned like construction and design to other projects around the house, like building a set of cabinets, a desk chair, or a cane for his dad. He tinkers with everything now. If something is broken, he’ll spend hours trying to mend it. He’ll fix bum microphones on set at work and has even repaired the column on his Dodge Magnum SRT8. And of course, trouble-shoot lightsabers for himself and others, who may otherwise feel intimidated or excluded from a subculture they’re passionate about.
“I like figuring it out,” he said. “This is extremely nerdy, but in order to be a Jedi Knight, you have to construct your own lightsaber. It’s like your expression of yourself. And that’s the joy of it.”
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