Displaying Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars Kyber Crystals

Kyber Crystals.  The power source of your friendly neighborhood Jedi’s lightsaber.  How do I store them?  One of the best souvenirs, hands-down, and yes I’m biased, are the lightsabers you can either build at Savi’s or buy at Dok Ondors.  Here is a video of my fellow padawan friends and me building our Sabers.

One of the best things the Disney and Lucasarts people did when they designed the Galaxy’s Edge lightsaber (GE Saber) is to allow you to change out the Kyber crystal that is in the lightsaber.  Through some great technology, which I can go on about for a couple of pages but I won’t here (but soon), they allow the GE Sabers to take on different colors and sounds based on the kyber crystal installed.

Due to limited travel in 2019-2020, the Kyber Crystal Sections of Dok’s became one of my favorite places to send people to increase and then complete my collection over the course of 3-4 months.  Another topic I will save for another post is the cool colors and sounds that are obtained with the different crystals.  But now that I had them, I felt it was a shame that I can really only use one at a time.  Of the 6 total, 5 would be sitting in a drawer or in a box/bag, waiting for their chance to make it to the saber.

So, this was the thought process on the design.

My first direction was to create some kind of rack that would display the 5 crystals.  Right away, the issue was if the crystals are mounted in a crib or some kind of holder, they would still not look that good.  Even though they are different colors and all stand out from one another, there had to be a way to give the display an extra boost.  Maybe shine a light on them?  Giving it some more thought as I looked around my office I see a couple of strings of wine bottle lights.  Basically, a string of lights with a wine bottle cork shaped battery pack and an on/off switch. Then the ‘wine bottle cork’ light-bulb went on over my head.  Since the crystals are kind of clear/translucent, I can shine the light from below.  Bingo, that’s the plan.  To hide the innards I would make the display in the shape of a box or a Kyber Crystal ‘Cleaning Unit‘.

The above picture is the proof of concept I used before beginning the build.

I built the box out of cardboard and created a small opening underneath and then used some aquarium stones that I had.  The light bled out a little bit, but on the whole, I was very happy.  For the build, I used balsa wood for the main shape of the box and with some trial and error, worked out a cutout and small collar mount to display the crystals and block some of the unfiltered light.  I heated up the glue gun and got to work.

The next step was wiring the lights.

I used what I had and I mentioned above I had wine bottle lights.  This is a battery-powered string of lights that has an on-off switch on the cork.  From the above picture, you can see the view from above, of the lights in their slots.  In the below picture, you can see the wiring.  The cork sticking out, which makes it easy to change batteries.  I left a little slack in the wire near the cork to make it easy to get it out.  The build actually worked out very easy and with the hot glue, it went fast.  The added bonus of the hot glue was, it dries very clear, and the light shines through it as well as the bulbs.

The last step was the color and the hardware.

I wanted it to look like a machine that you would get as a utility device.  So think about an everyday device that is on the desk or workbench like a battery charger or pencil sharpener.  But, you know, translated into the Star Wars Galaxy as a Kyber Crystal Tuner/Cleaner/Charger. Based on Savi’s, I figured it would be metallic.  That made it a bit easier, so a lot of aluminum and grey and black paint.  As for the hardware, I hit the box of extra model parts I have been collecting for decades.  Some of those parts are from the model part tree and a couple of engine exhausts and some other parts.  Laid them out and glued them on and then did the paint.

Of course, I straightened out those pieces before gluing.  Painted it up with a couple of coats of the first primer then the aluminum/black mix and then a bit of weathering.  For the bed of stones, I used those same stones from the test.  They reflected the light as if they were lit up.  I painted the bed black to give it more depth.  I also ended up having to glue down all those stones.  Just too much of a pain moving it and the rocks falling off.

And there you have it, the proto-type Utapauian Kyber Crystal Tuner and Cleaner unit.

One last footnote.

I had made 6 slots for the 6 Kyber crystals.  Green, white, blue, purple, yellow, and red.  However, I did not take into account that I would not actually be tuning all of my crystals at the same time.  One would always be in my Lightsaber and the other would be on display on the Crystal pad on the Lightsaber stand.  So I had to slots throwing off bright unfiltered light and I’m sure the Utapaui did not want to burn out their eyes.  I created a couple of fake stone caps for those spots when not tuning crystals.

I have a couple more Lightsaber Crafts to share very soon.  One is a great little stand modeled on the lightsaber stands at Savi’s.  I also did another project with the crystals but I guarantee it’s not what you’re thinking.  Drop a note below.  Please share how you store and clean your force-sensitive Galaxy’s Edge treasures!

FYI:  Check it out.  Utapau is real.   Well, Star Wars real.