My name is Avery Castillo, and I am a lightsaber installer and content creator.

While content creation still feels like a new thing to me, I started making videos on TikTok back in 2020. My content began as a mixture of things I was interested in such as showing off my replica prop collections, exercise videos, guitar playing, and ninja warrior… but it quickly became clear that videos about my custom lightsabers were what people loved.

My own love for lightsabers began farther back than I can remember, with my earliest memories being running around the house with those flickable plastic lightsaber toys, and sitting on the floor of my bedroom watching the original Star Wars trilogy on my tiny VHS TV.

At 13, I started wondering if it was possible to buy lightsabers that looked like they came right out of the movies. So, I started doing some research, and my journey into the custom lightsaber community began.

Soon enough I discovered the FX-Saber forum, TheRPF, TheCustomSaberShop, and TheRebelArmory, where I started learning all about the custom lightsaber community. I read about highly accurate lightsaber replicas, custom electronics, crystal chamber lightsabers, and more importantly… the fact that you could build your own lightsabers. From that point on I was hooked.

At the time I wasn’t at all interested in building my own lightsabers, but my dream was to own a Crystal Chamber Graflex made by the man who first put a chassis and crystal chamber in a lightsaber: Yoda of the FX-Saber forum. At the time I couldn’t afford to buy one fully built, but he also offered a cheaper option in DIY kits for people who wanted to build one themselves. The only problem was that I had absolutely no skills whatsoever, and I had no money for the parts and tools. From that point on, the direction of my life was decided.

Two years later in 2015, I got my first custom lightsaber and my first job. From 2016-2017 I saved enough to get parts and build my first lightsaber. 2018 I built my second, and by 2020 I had a collection of 6 custom lightsabers. Then everything changed when I started posting videos about them on TikTok.

My lightsaber videos started to gain more and more traction, garnering hundreds of thousands of views, and people even were asking me if I could make lightsabers for them. I had managed to make about 3 lightsabers during this time, with the more modern neopixel technology and soundboards, but I still wasn’t comfortable making them for others yet until I had a lot more practice. So, I began to work on friend’s lightsabers and some of my own, and documented everything on TikTok as I went.

During that time, I kept making videos, and before I knew it I was doing commissions, building master chassis level lightsabers, and my TikTok following launched all the way to 250k while garnering millions of views.

Since then, I’ve also started putting my content on YouTube and making full length build videos and tutorials. These videos have helped showcase my work, gain customers, and hopefully brought many people into the amazingly rewarding hobby of lightsaber building. But not only that, because of these videos I believe I am one of the most transparent installers out there. You can see exactly where I started, how I developed, and you know what I do step by step in my lightsaber builds.

I’m very proud of the work I’ve done thus far, and I’m excited to continue improving my video making skills alongside teaching people how to build their own lightsabers, increasing my own abilities, and making lightsabers for the people who want them from me.I plan on expanding into adding different types of content in the future, but rest assured I will always be making lightsabers and lightsaber content!

Thank you all for reading my story, for checking out my website, and for supporting me as I continue to wherever this journey takes us!