Genesis Custom Sabers: Handcrafted lightsabers for real life Jedis

“Imagination is one of the most profound human qualities. Every great achievement in human history has started as a work of imagination.”

Beginning life as a passion project, Genesis Custom Sabers has since grown into Rob Petkau’s full time job. From cobbled together ‘junk sabers’ to immaculately crafted illuminated swords, Rob has honed his craft over the years, and now places only the highest quality sabers in the hands of wannabe Jedis.

In this episode Rob explores the evolution of his designs, and how advances in technology have allowed him to create perfectly custom fit blades. He explains how he creates and designs the sound fonts that bring the sabers to life. And he discusses the immense appreciation he has for his fans, some who treat their sabers as ‘shelf queens’, and others, like Jimmy, who test (and break) them in combat.

We also hear from Jon Hirschtick, who heads up PTC’s Onshape division. He explains how Onshape allows Rob to meticulously finesse and customize his designs.

Find out more about the Genesis Custom Sabers here.

Find out more about Onshape here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Ollie Guillou. Location recording by Jess Schmidt. Music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Rob Petkau: So that’s my voice, reading the Sith code backwards. 

Jess Schmidt: Wow, that’s so cool. 

Rob Petkau: So it made it sound like some hypnotic, dark, ghostly language.

Paul Haimes: Welcome to Third Angle. In this episode, we meet a creator crafting Star Wars-inspired custom sabers. 

I’m your host, Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast we share the moments where digital transforms physical, and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology. 

Whether it’s Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver, James Bond’s X-ray glasses or Marty McFly’s hoverboard from Back to the Future, gadgets and tech from film and TV are a great source of inspiration and enjoyment for many of us. 

One item that’s long piqued the interests of curious minds is the iconic lightsaber from Star Wars. It’s been so inspirational to Rob Petkau, in fact, that he now spends his time designing and building custom sabers for fans all around the world. Rob is the founder of Genesis Custom Sabers, and our producer Jess met with him to find out how he’s crafting these blades.

Rob Petkau: If you were to say to me 30 years ago, “Oh yeah, you’ll be making lightsabers out of your own home shop for a living,” I couldn’t even envision that, let alone explain how unrealistic that is. Welcome to what I call it my secret base, or my lair. Man cave, some would call it, studio. It’s a garage. But on the inside, it is decorated with all kinds of props and set-related things. My vision, I guess, is to try to make a workspace that was inspiring, that made me feel like I was in a science fiction universe. So here’s my workstation, computer, a lot of memorabilia, some Star Wars art, and this is a display case with a whole bunch of lightsaber hilts. And these are some of the boxes that I ship lightsabers in with a little catchphrase on it: “Art you can fight with.” 

The company Genesis Custom Sabers started out as Genesis Custom Lightsabers, as a hobby. But when I turned pro, I didn’t want to get sued so I nixed the lightsabers. We generally call these things “illuminated sabers”. It’s been 25 years since I first started dabbling with lightsabers as a hobby, and at that time there wasn’t very much information available. I had just gotten on the internet. Those of us that have been around that long, what we used to do at that time was we would build junk sabers. We’d go to a hardware store, we’d find things that looked like the parts of the sabers used in the films, and we tried to construct these things. Then one thing led to another, and you wanted to learn electronics and start putting LEDs in, and blades, and functional components, and you needed to learn electronics skills, or machining skills, and an online community developed of a few of us. And then, over the years, some of those hobbies turned into businesses. And so, since 2010-2011, I’ve been doing this full time. 

I wish I’d kept some of the first sabers that I worked on. If I was to describe them, imagine a piece of plumbing tube with a couple of holes drilled in it. And inside, if you stick your thumb through one of those holes, there’s a flashlight, and you can flick it on. And there’s a little plastic tube that’s commonly used inside golf bags to keep your golf clubs separate. If you can find a transparent one, well, that’s the blade, and that’s what catches the light, and you can run out in the dark and fight with your friends. In fact, I was a part of a youth group back in Sydney Pentecostal Church way back in the day. And we used to build these things with the kids, and we would go out into the field behind the church in the middle of the night and we’d have these massive lightsaber fights. That was a lot of fun, but they were horrible. They didn’t even look like a decent toy, let alone something respectable. And now, we’ve got precision-machined aluminium, CNC-machined aluminium. All the parts are designed, I do a lot of CAD design now with the Onshape programming. So I can make things perfectly custom fit to look and feel the way I want: the size, the weight, powder coating, anodising. I do a lot of artificial ageing and weathering and battle damage, like you would do for a genuine movie prop, and the blades are polycarbonate. They’re technically bulletproof plastic. I don’t recommend anyone try to stop a bullet with a lightsaber, but they’ve come a long way.

Someone in the know, in the hobby, we call them glorified flashlights, which is really a great way to describe the effects. Sometimes people who ship these things internationally will call them a flashlight on the shipping bill for customs purposes, because what in the world are these things? How do you describe that to a customs officer? They’re machined aluminium – generally aluminium, sometimes there are other metals – with internals that include a high-powered LED or a control capability to run pixel LEDs up the blade. There’s usually a central computer of some kind, we call it a sound card, that controls the sounds and the lighting effects, and some kind of power source – a battery, usually a lithium-ion rechargeable battery. There are buttons and switches and indicators and a lot of other cosmetic things, but those are the key components of what goes into one of these custom sabers. 

With the single high-brightness LED, I know some guys online that have purchased from me that carry theirs around on rounds and as a night watchman or security guard; they can pull it off their belt and flick it on like a bright blue or green flashlight, and they’ve actually used it like that. I mean, who doesn’t want to walk around in the middle of night with a lightsaber on your belt? Come on!

There are several types of lightsabers that I do. There’s what’s called the “Shelf Queen”, which is basically like a model you would put on a shelf, have a little label on it, and nobody gets to touch it, and it looks nice. Then there’s the full-on combat saber. I’ve got a friend named Jimmy who runs a duelling group in Calgary here, he actually works with live steel swords, and he’s won competitions in sword combat. They have full armour and gear, and they use lightsabers with heavier blades. And they go full on, and they’ve got helmets and gear, and they score points. And they hit each other hard. And he’s always coming in here because he’s broken something – he is the worst at destroying things that are not supposed to be breakable. And he takes pride in that. He just calls me up and he says, “I broke another one. I’m so proud of myself.” And he brings me a pack of Guinness and I fix his lightsaber. He’ll be happy to be mentioned. He’s a great guy. Yeah, and so and everything in between. 

Now, the huge middle ground in those two extremes is the cosplay industry, which has sprung up over the last 20 years. And so people spend thousands of dollars on these elaborate costumes. And not only replica costumes from films or games or pop culture, but hybrid costumes, or they cast themselves as a Jedi or a Sith and they want something unique. And so often, my customers will come find me because I don’t make the replica hilts. I make something that’s a little bit more personalised, a little bit more unique. And so they’ll want something that they can flick on at a hospital charity and fight with somebody or play with some kids, but also looks good hanging on their costume.

I get asked all the time what my favourite saber is, and I have a hard time answering. I tell people it’s because they’re like my children. There are sabers I like for different reasons. I mean, I have what I would kind of have called years ago my personal saber, which was part of this whole journey. If I was a Jedi, what would my lightsaber look like? And that’s a lot of what resonates, I think, between me and my customer base. So I have that saber that I developed, but I haven’t touched it in years. It’s old technology. Since then, I’ve played around with other ideas. 

I’ve got a couple that I really like. One of my production series sabers is called the Ascent. And I’ve got a variation of it that uses an etching pattern that I kind of derived from some of the artwork on a video game called Skyrim, which has nothing to do with Jedi. But it’s just beautiful kind of Norse-reminiscent artwork that evolved. I always really loved Norse artwork. So I’ve got some etching on that. And so that one really resonates with me. 

And then I’ve got another one that I designed back in 2009 that’s my interpretation of a character saber from novels that I read. Drew Karpyshyn wrote Star Wars novels about a character named Darth Bane. So I created a saber because he didn’t have a really great reference. If you looked it up, there weren’t any good images, so I thought, “I’m going to create one.” And the fans have been great, they’ve really resonated with my image. And to this point, if you look up Darth Bane’s lightsaber, you’ll probably see pictures of my design. That one has been so well-received by fans that it has a special place in my heart, because when your work is appreciated you can’t help but really relish that.

[lightsaber sound plays]

Rob Petkau: I don’t know if I have a favourite sound – we call them “sound fonts”. I’ve been building these for the sabers for over a decade now, and so the ones that I worked on 10 years ago, there isn’t as much nuance to them, even though I’ve gone back and added to them. The newer ones I just feel are more… there’s more quality, there’s more nuance to it. I’ve got a sound font called Rogue, which is long before the movie Rogue One, that I just envisioned as just kind of a rogue Jedi, kind of an off the beaten path. So that was my attempt at making a sound font that would be me if I was a Jedi. So that one I really liked. 

There’s also a newer one that I’ve done called Ashes. I always felt with the dark side sound font that I never was able to kind of really achieve that visceral feel that I was looking for, until this one. I’d learned a couple of different techniques, and I’d played a video game where the sounds were really striking to me. So I tried to recreate some of that effect and really capture that feel, and I feel like I nailed it with that one. It’s called Ashes.

[lightsaber sound “Ashes” plays]

Rob Petkau: So this is that visceral sound font, the Ashes font. It’s an easter egg sounds with some Sith. So that’s my voice, reading the Sith code backwards. 

Jess Schmidt: Wow, that’s so cool. 

Rob Petkau: So I made it sound like some hypnotic, dark, ghostly language that’s in there, and you can find that. 

[lightsaber sound plays]

Rob Petkau: So that’s that sound font that I really made with this sabre in mind. 

Jess Schmidt: That’s cool.

Rob Petkau: And with this one, it’s got – I only do this one on my really high-end ones – where the user can take apart a couple of components – in this case, it’s two screws – and then you slide the bone segment back, and every lightsaber has got a crystal inside, it’s part of the lore. And the crystal reacts. Like with this lightsaber, it’s got red, because the blade colour is red, but if I alter the colour, change the blade colour, the crystal responds, and changes colour to match whatever the blade colour is. 

Jess Schmidt: That’s so cool. Wow. 

Rob Petkau: So a lot of the higher-end, more expensive sabers are ones that they can operate as a “Shelf Queen”, so we can take it apart, and they feel more real because they can see the crystal, and they can respond to the visuals of the inside of the sabre, because they’ve all read the stories of Jedi creating their lightsabers and crafting them and working on these internal parts. So they want to be able to see and interact with that.

A couple of years ago, I really resonated with, as I always do, the word “imagination”. And something clicked. And I realised, imagination is one of the most profound human qualities. It affects everything. Every great achievement in human history has started as a work of imagination. All art is a work of imagination, the ability to communicate and identify with nature, which I love, there’s elements of imagination. When imagination becomes stretched or challenged, that’s a good thing. There’s opportunity there. Creativity, everything. I was really overwhelmed with this revelation of how big a deal imagination is. 

I step back and I look at our current Western culture, and I just feel like maybe as it’s a post-industrial era, we value action, we value results. We put in our time, we put imagination in a box, and it often doesn’t affect our day-to-day. I read up this term recently, “quiet quitting” – the idea of just deciding to phone it in. “Okay, I’m not going to put in any more than I need to. This is my day job.” There’s no imagination there, there’s no life there. So I just kind of see it everywhere now.

Paul Haimes: That was Rob Petkau, founder of Genesis Custom Sabers. And as Rob mentioned, to create truly custom blades, a lot of his design work is now done using Onshape, PTC’s cloud-based computer aided design and product data management platform. Let’s find out more. Time to meet our expert Jon Hirschtick, who heads up PTC’s Onshape division. John, I know that Rob admits to having no CAD experience, and he didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars for a CAD solution and then have to learn how to use it. Is that one of the advantages of using Onshape?

Jon Hirschtick: Yes, absolutely, Paul. One of the advantages of using Onshape is you don’t need to not only spend thousands of dollars on buying a software licence, but you don’t need to buy a special workstation, you don’t need to go to a Windows computer, which you know, a lot of cool people don’t want to deal with Windows computer these days, you don’t need to worry about a special graphics card and all that. So someone like Rob, he can just take whatever computer is using – his MacBook, Chromebook, or iPad – and get started. And then it is easier to use and learn. We deliver the professional-grade CAD capabilities, a new generation of data management, and it’s built right into any web browser that you could use. So that makes it perfect for Rob and his colleagues.

Paul Haimes: Now, Onshape can deal with both complex and not-so-complex designs. And do you think the work that Rob’s doing actually shows off that flexibility, John?

Jon Hirschtick: Yes, I think that Rob’s work shows off some of the aspects of complexity that you can do with Onshape that professionals need. Now, it’s not as complex as other products we have, so there’s different aspects of complexity. In Rob’s case, with the Genesis Sabres, he’s putting a lot of detail in, and these parts are very intricate. When he designs a lightsaber, he wants to express an artistic design. 

I think what makes his sabres stand out is that, and also the craftsmanship and detail of how they’re manufactured. I think Rob’s trying to create a feeling that his sabre, which is an assembly of intricate parts, can almost give the user a feeling of transporting to somewhere else through its craftsmanship, its detail, its realism. And that is because of the complexity that Rob’s able to model in Onshape, both at the single-part level and at the assembly level. 

And I just want to add that I’m a big Star Wars fan, my children, my adult children, are big Star Wars fans, and so seeing Onshape used at Genesis Custom Sabres is particularly exciting for us – and who knows, we may even be ringing them when we go to the Disney Galactic Star Cruiser. We’ve made our reservations for that coming up, so we’re super excited to see a Star Wars-oriented customer.

Thanks to John and to Rob for giving us a glimpse into the work of Genesis Custom Sabres. Please rate, review and subscribe to our bi-weekly Third Angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts, and follow PTC on LinkedIn and Twitter for future episodes. 

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Ollie Guillou. Location recording by Jess Schmidt. Music by Rowan Bishop.