LEGO Tips, Tricks, and Techniques - Lightsaber Hilt

The lightsaber hilt.  Ubiquitous weapon of Jedi and Sith alike.  Made in LEGO form.  Chromed even.  What a cool little utensil.  Maybe I don't prowl Flickr enough but I just haven't seen it used very much as a stud reversal tool.  There could be a reason for this.  It's a rather odd piece with a rather odd measurement.

For starters, one can always stack plates and see how tall something is.  It's a good basic measurement.  The problem with this piece is that it's longer than 3 plates wide and it doesn't quite fit within 4 plates.

At least we have it narrowed down to between 3 and 4 plates.  Let's throw a travis brick into the mix.  The travis brick sideways is 2.5 plates.  With another plate for thickness we get to 3.5 plates which isn't quite enough.  How odd!  So it must be between 3.5 and 4 plates.  Should we try for 3.75?

But why that number?  And how do we achieve 3.75 plates?  Let's look at it from a different measurement.  If you've read my other blog posts, you'll know that I prefer millimeter for LEGO dimensions.  Since 1 plate height = 3.2mm, we can deduce that the lightsaber hilt is 12mm between the two end studs (3.2 x 3.75 = 12).  Since a 1x1 brick or plate is 8mm x 8mm, we could rightly conclude that a brick and a half in width would meet this size.

Still odd.  But at least we can do something with it now.  So travis bricks, staggered on jumper plates ought to equal the length of the lightsaber hilt.  Whaddya know, voila!  So there's one application for whatever reason or usage.

But why stop there since we're on a roll?  One more odd half brick width piece comes to mind and that's the thin liftarm.  Thick liftarms have a square cross section of 8mm x 8mm much like looking down on the top of a 1x1 brick.  Thin liftarms are half of that in one direction, 8mm x 4mm.  Since a brick is 2.5 plates x 2.5 plates wide, the thin liftarm would be 2.5 plates x 1.25 plates wide.  Wait, wait, how's that math?  Three thin liftarms at 1.25 plates wide... carry the 16... factorial... equals... 3.75 plates.  Well yee-haw, another application.

But in either case, what do you do with it?  I can see using the hilt inline to create a point for a clip to attach.  This probably isn't the only way but this offers a nice tight connection.  Personally, I'm flummoxed.  Unfortunately those who figure out the math often don't make any money, it's those who find an application for the math that do.  So use your money maker and give us your best ideas in the comments.