I have finished the Primaris Lieutenant with power sword from the Dark Imperium box.
I’m very pleased with how the power sword turned out. It was definitely one of my most fiddly LED conversions to date. As there was a bit of trial-and-error involved I didn’t take photos to make a tutorial this time, but now I’ve perfected the process I will do when I make the next model with a power sword.
Chris Buxey Paints 
I’ve been working on LED-eye marines as well. I’ve been having trouble with my power sword. The two attempts I’ve made so far have failed pretty spectacularly.
For the first, I took a resin sword and cut off the bottom, then installed an ice-blue 0805 LED into the guard, and remoulded the guard, hilt, and pommel with greenstuff. The light from the LED made it less than half-way up the sword.
For my second attempt, I cast a pair of 0805 LEDs right into the blade of the sword. This gives great light coverage, but resin flowed over the wires and, when I tried to clean up the resin, the wires broke.
I’m hoping that you might have some pointers on how to get my sword coming out properly.
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Hi Brendan, it sounds like you’re definitely on the right track. 🙂 I’m currently working on a detailed LED power weapon tutorial, but it probably won’t be finished for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you’ve got the LED in the hilt, have you tried drilling a very thin hole most of the way down the length of the blade, to help the light propagate? It’ll probably require a 1mm still bit. Also, what type of resin blade are you using?
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I haven’t drilled a hole for light propagation. I’ll give that a try. I’m casting the swords out of urethane resin, but it seems to be different to what you’re using. It should dry semi-clear yellow, which is good for light propagation. Mine usually forms a lot of tiny bubbles throughout the cast, which causes a lot more dispersion and is certainly part of the problem.
I was trying to avoid drilling a fine hole down the middle of the sword because of the potential for error, but it would be better for losses than what I’ve been doing (casting the leds into the sword), so I’ll give that a try.
All going well, photos coming soon!
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That sounds good! Yes, I use a resin that sets as a mostly opaque cream colour. I did use transparent resin originally, but I found the cream coloured resin does a much better job of diffusing the light uniformly, giving a much more even effect. I’d highly recommend it!
Do you have a blog or social media where I could see your finished models? I’m always very interested to see other people’s LED projects. 🙂 In addition to this blog you can find me on Twitter @chris_buxey or Instagram @chrisbuxey if you’d like to see more LED stuff. 👍
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I haven’t got anything with my models on it at the moment. I’ll have to set something up. I’ll comment here when it’s got something worth seeing 😉
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