Rey’s Staff

This was one of the first major jobs I sliced for my brand-new Form2 resin printer. Halloween was coming, and the family had committed (some of us more enthusiastically than others) to going full Star Wars. One of the costumes was Rey, and if you’ve seen The Force Awakens you know Rey’s quarterstaff is just super cool. Naturally, that became my department.

Let me be upfront: I did not design this. Full credit goes to Ian Henry, who modeled the staff in beautiful segmented detail and offered the files up for a very reasonable price. So my job here wasn’t artistry — it was execution. Which, as anybody who has babysat a resin printer for a week can tell you, is its own kind of project.

Ian Henry's segmented breakdown of Rey's staff, showing every named part — pommels, fin grips, rib grips and the central wood dowel

Look at all those named pieces. Every grip, fin, pommel and greebly prints separately, which meant a lot of trips back to the Form2. These were big, solid parts and the Form2 was not what you’d call speedy, so printing spanned the better part of a week. Worth it, though — the resin holds crisp detail you just can’t get otherwise.

A tray of freshly printed translucent resin segments for the staff, still uncured-looking and cloudy

With the parts in hand, the next trick was making it a staff and not a bag of cool-looking giblets. I assembled everything onto a central aluminum tube in order. Aluminum because it’s lightweight and stiff. The fit-up shots are the moment it stops being a pile and starts being a thing.

Test fit-up of the resin segments threaded onto the aluminum tube, one end of the staff
Test fit-up of the opposite end of the staff, segments stacked along the tube

Then the part that always makes or breaks a prop: prime, paint, and distress. A clean shiny staff reads as a toy. A staff with worn metal tones and a little grime reads as something Rey actually dragged across Jakku. So I painted it up in gunmetal and steel, then knocked it back down with some weathering until it looked like it had a history. (I even rolled bits of it in the dirt!)

The staff after priming and painting in weathered gunmetal tones, distressed to look used

Finish work was the fun, cheap part — a few leather scraps wrapped at the grips and a length of dirtied nylon strap so it could be slung across the back. Done.

The finished staff slung across the back of the completed Rey costume

Fun accessory, came together better than I had any right to expect for a first big resin job, and it’s still in great shape to this day. Thanks, Ian.