DM51
Flashaholic
Well, I have acquired a MONSTER dive-light from jason_01 (to whom many grateful thanks) and I'm now looking forward to modding it. It was made for the British Royal Navy. Here it is:
It was made in the UK, it says in 1993 but could just as well have been ~1922, lol. It is 12 inches long, and it weighs in at a modest 3 lbs 4 oz (1.5 kgs) which is heeaavyyyyy, man. It is SUPERB! Some more pics:
The quality of the engineering is amazing. That tailcap is solid heavy stainless steel, with threads as smooth as butter. The body is cast aluminium, the lens is ¼ inch (6 mm) thick, the O-rings are ⅛ inch (3 mm) thick… the thing is MASSIVE. It was obviously built to last, and it has to be practically unbreakable.
It came with a bulb which, on examination, looked OK — the filament seemed to be intact.
I stole 3x "D" alkalines from the Dear Wife's radio, put them in the light and… IT WORKED!!! ~15 lumens, lol.
My plan is to mod it to take a WA1185 with 3x AW "C" Li-Ions. It will be the ultimate sleeper dive-light — nobody will think an ancient clunker like this would be able to blast out ~1,000 lm lol. I really need to get a digital camera that does manual exposures so I can get a proper shot of the light with the POS stock bulb, and then another at the same exposure setting when I've finished the mod.
It should be a fairly easy job (if I'm going to do it, it will have to be easy — I'm useless at fixing stuff).
1. The tailswitch won't need any changing except to file the end of the spring flatter for a better contact.
2. I will need a tube and spacer for AW's "C" Li-Ion cells to fit the 3D body.
3. I'll also need a new reflector as the stock one is made of a thin metal, which could be tin-plate and is very poor (it seems extraordinary that the rest of the light is so solidly-made, and then they go and put this flimsy cr&p reflector in it). A Mag reflector is nearly the same size, so I have ordered 2 camless MOP reflectors from Fivemega, on the basis that I'm bound to make a pig's ear of the first one when I try to mill it down to fit.
4. Finally, I will need to find a bulb adaptor to take a 1185 — does anyone know if this one would be the right size? The pins on a WA1185 are 4mm apart.
I'm not going to rush this — I want to get it right.
It was made in the UK, it says in 1993 but could just as well have been ~1922, lol. It is 12 inches long, and it weighs in at a modest 3 lbs 4 oz (1.5 kgs) which is heeaavyyyyy, man. It is SUPERB! Some more pics:
The quality of the engineering is amazing. That tailcap is solid heavy stainless steel, with threads as smooth as butter. The body is cast aluminium, the lens is ¼ inch (6 mm) thick, the O-rings are ⅛ inch (3 mm) thick… the thing is MASSIVE. It was obviously built to last, and it has to be practically unbreakable.
It came with a bulb which, on examination, looked OK — the filament seemed to be intact.
I stole 3x "D" alkalines from the Dear Wife's radio, put them in the light and… IT WORKED!!! ~15 lumens, lol.
My plan is to mod it to take a WA1185 with 3x AW "C" Li-Ions. It will be the ultimate sleeper dive-light — nobody will think an ancient clunker like this would be able to blast out ~1,000 lm lol. I really need to get a digital camera that does manual exposures so I can get a proper shot of the light with the POS stock bulb, and then another at the same exposure setting when I've finished the mod.
It should be a fairly easy job (if I'm going to do it, it will have to be easy — I'm useless at fixing stuff).
1. The tailswitch won't need any changing except to file the end of the spring flatter for a better contact.
2. I will need a tube and spacer for AW's "C" Li-Ion cells to fit the 3D body.
3. I'll also need a new reflector as the stock one is made of a thin metal, which could be tin-plate and is very poor (it seems extraordinary that the rest of the light is so solidly-made, and then they go and put this flimsy cr&p reflector in it). A Mag reflector is nearly the same size, so I have ordered 2 camless MOP reflectors from Fivemega, on the basis that I'm bound to make a pig's ear of the first one when I try to mill it down to fit.
4. Finally, I will need to find a bulb adaptor to take a 1185 — does anyone know if this one would be the right size? The pins on a WA1185 are 4mm apart.
I'm not going to rush this — I want to get it right.
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