Introducing... Darth Vaper

DSCF2190 by Dizzy Knits, on Flickr

My first mod, a simple 3.7 volt job. With huge thanks to Mark at Warlords who supplied all the bits apart from tin and battery and even threw in a free pre-soldered connector to help me see how to solder that correctly. Along with other freebies and a lot of help through Warlords chat service. I highly recommend Warlords, Mark is extremely helpful and knowledgeable and a top chap all round.


DSCF2189 by Dizzy Knits, on Flickr

The wiring bit was easy, although I think I need a better soldering iron. The battery is a very tight ft, I was expecting the tin to be slightly bigger so I had more room for maneuver, but I think I made a fair fist of it. Lots and lots of insulating tape and hot glue to keep everything in place and prevent shorts. The difficult bit was drilling the holes - next time I'll get hubby to take the tin to work and use their drill press. Also next time I'll be using a bigger tin or a smaller battery - I might redo this one to take a smaller battery as well. I'd really rather stick a proper plastic battery holder in there, instead of faffing about with so much tape which may wear through in time.


DSCF2192 by Dizzy Knits, on Flickr

This one isn't brilliant, I neglected to protect the tin by wrapping it with tape before starting work on it so there's some scratches and worn-off paint on the edges of the back. The lid is now a very tight fit due to some buckling where I drilled the hole for the connector. And there's a small hole close to the connector, caused by me not being careful enough when tapping the pilot hole. But it works, and hey, it's Darth Vaper! This one's for hubby, the Star Wars geek, for Christmas. I also have Storm Trooper and R2D2 tins to mod, all the tins came with free mints so that's a bonus And I have plans for a bright pink torch mod, and a pipe on its way from Ukraine also to be modded. Watch this space...