Bimmerboy
Flashlight Enthusiast
Well, at least they make family, and some friends go "hmmm", and look at me like I have two heads. But they just don't understand.
Edit: This thread is extremely dial-up unfriendly. I suggest grabbing a beer while waiting for the pics to load. :drunk:
After more than two years of being a flashaholic, and a member of CPF, I found myself feeling a little dissatisfied with regard to not having created any real, home made mods in all this time. Pretty much just collecting some lights, and some parts... with the intention of eventually building this and that, but very few builds becoming reality. In fact, my personal "coolest" light (shown further below) is an excellent creation, with components made by numerous CPF'ers and different manufacturers, but I didn't make a single part of it.
Long story short, I've started doing something about it, and have built a couple of lights that I would consider to be on a fairly "home made" level... lol. There were some things laying around the place that looked like they'd make fairly unique lights, so I went for it. A quick run to Radio Shack for parts, a quick brush up on soldering, and things were rollin'. I hope you all get a kick out of this stuff... I know I did. Putting this nonsense together while laughing was a challenge.
First up... "The Choco-lite".
This past Christmas, everybody got Ferrero Rocher chocolates in their stockings. They came in clear plastic, pyramid shaped containers, holding 5 of the tasty little morsels. After chomping them down, I looked at the empty container and thought "hmmmmm". Here's the end result.
Take one Ferrero pyramid, double-sided poster tape, 2 AA battery holders, an original MJLED, Minimag switch/bulb pedestal, and a little power switch. Add solder and beer, work for two hours, and voila!
I never liked the very strange, blue/green/puke tint of the MJLED's since day one. It's almost an indescribable color, and just sucks, even though the thing is very bright. I have another one of these pyramids for the "Choco-lite II", and it's gonna' run a much nicer tinted SMJLED, and a 14500 Li-ion... hahaha.
The next, and even more stupid creation is "The Arawak Love Candle", aka. "Evening Wood". I'll leave the double entendre up to you to figure out.
Many years ago, a friend went to the Caribbean for vacation with his GF. They brought back for me a knick-knack container made of some kind of nice looking hardwood, and inside was a bag of "Arawak Love Potion". Smelled mostly of oregano... lol. It was a fairly handsome, touristy kind of souvenir thing, and it was to be my next victim.
I've wanted to make a light out of this thing for almost two years. Looked at it collecting dust one day, and thought "hmmmmm". But, I never had any spare parts laying around that seemed like they'd work. What finally made it possible was a 3AAA, 9 LED, $1 Chinese flashlight bought at a local dollar store, and given to me as a gift recently. I looked at the wood container again, looked at the flashlight, and thought "HMM HHMMMM!!!". We were now in business.
Got a bunch of whatever the heck tools were in the garage, some of them probably not quite the best tools for the job. No real plan, except a vision of the finished product. But, I was gung ho, and nothing was gonna' stop me. Here is the end result.
I'm actually quite proud of this thing. Not only does it work, but the LE operates noticeably brighter than in it's original host, has whiter tint (no angry blue at all!), but will also give longer runtime. Better electrical path, and bigger batts.
The head assembly. I was NOT going to pull it apart for the pics. Pos and neg run through individual holes drilled through the cap, and there is a quick disconnect for cap removal. The pos. contact is from a Mag Solitaire tailcap spring.
The power comes from a 3AA to 1D adaptor. These have received negative commentary from many in the past, but it works quite well in this application!
The shiny, coppery looking thing is a 1968 (more Cu) penny, ground and drilled by Dremel, hand filed afterward, and soldered to the negative lead.
The switch controlled negative connections, coming from the penny, going to the head.
You can see the negative connection on the right, which comes up from underneath the LED assembly. I had to use the Dremel's engraving bit to dig channels and pits in the wood under there, because of the wires and little solder blobs.
And this is the $1 light. These things are actually really great! Good looking, bright, very good tint to be honest, and they come with a little 3AAA battery holder inside with 3 included batteries (sucky ones though)! Went to the store myself this time and picked up a couple more... one for the mod, and one for the car (using Energizer E2's for cold weather reliability).
Size comparison to a standard click lighter.
All this has now brought things to a new level for me, and am currently in a modding frenzy. Got some parts coming in for various other projects, one of which will be dumber than The Choco-lite and Evening Wood combined, but to me, it'll be cool as hell. :devil:
I've really found a new satisfaction in this hobby by doing these mods, and I hope they were fun for people to look at. There's definitely more coming. I get strange ideas all the time, and these won't be the last.
Edit: This thread is extremely dial-up unfriendly. I suggest grabbing a beer while waiting for the pics to load. :drunk:
After more than two years of being a flashaholic, and a member of CPF, I found myself feeling a little dissatisfied with regard to not having created any real, home made mods in all this time. Pretty much just collecting some lights, and some parts... with the intention of eventually building this and that, but very few builds becoming reality. In fact, my personal "coolest" light (shown further below) is an excellent creation, with components made by numerous CPF'ers and different manufacturers, but I didn't make a single part of it.
Long story short, I've started doing something about it, and have built a couple of lights that I would consider to be on a fairly "home made" level... lol. There were some things laying around the place that looked like they'd make fairly unique lights, so I went for it. A quick run to Radio Shack for parts, a quick brush up on soldering, and things were rollin'. I hope you all get a kick out of this stuff... I know I did. Putting this nonsense together while laughing was a challenge.
First up... "The Choco-lite".
This past Christmas, everybody got Ferrero Rocher chocolates in their stockings. They came in clear plastic, pyramid shaped containers, holding 5 of the tasty little morsels. After chomping them down, I looked at the empty container and thought "hmmmmm". Here's the end result.
Take one Ferrero pyramid, double-sided poster tape, 2 AA battery holders, an original MJLED, Minimag switch/bulb pedestal, and a little power switch. Add solder and beer, work for two hours, and voila!
I never liked the very strange, blue/green/puke tint of the MJLED's since day one. It's almost an indescribable color, and just sucks, even though the thing is very bright. I have another one of these pyramids for the "Choco-lite II", and it's gonna' run a much nicer tinted SMJLED, and a 14500 Li-ion... hahaha.
The next, and even more stupid creation is "The Arawak Love Candle", aka. "Evening Wood". I'll leave the double entendre up to you to figure out.
Many years ago, a friend went to the Caribbean for vacation with his GF. They brought back for me a knick-knack container made of some kind of nice looking hardwood, and inside was a bag of "Arawak Love Potion". Smelled mostly of oregano... lol. It was a fairly handsome, touristy kind of souvenir thing, and it was to be my next victim.
I've wanted to make a light out of this thing for almost two years. Looked at it collecting dust one day, and thought "hmmmmm". But, I never had any spare parts laying around that seemed like they'd work. What finally made it possible was a 3AAA, 9 LED, $1 Chinese flashlight bought at a local dollar store, and given to me as a gift recently. I looked at the wood container again, looked at the flashlight, and thought "HMM HHMMMM!!!". We were now in business.
Got a bunch of whatever the heck tools were in the garage, some of them probably not quite the best tools for the job. No real plan, except a vision of the finished product. But, I was gung ho, and nothing was gonna' stop me. Here is the end result.
I'm actually quite proud of this thing. Not only does it work, but the LE operates noticeably brighter than in it's original host, has whiter tint (no angry blue at all!), but will also give longer runtime. Better electrical path, and bigger batts.
The head assembly. I was NOT going to pull it apart for the pics. Pos and neg run through individual holes drilled through the cap, and there is a quick disconnect for cap removal. The pos. contact is from a Mag Solitaire tailcap spring.
The power comes from a 3AA to 1D adaptor. These have received negative commentary from many in the past, but it works quite well in this application!
The shiny, coppery looking thing is a 1968 (more Cu) penny, ground and drilled by Dremel, hand filed afterward, and soldered to the negative lead.
The switch controlled negative connections, coming from the penny, going to the head.
You can see the negative connection on the right, which comes up from underneath the LED assembly. I had to use the Dremel's engraving bit to dig channels and pits in the wood under there, because of the wires and little solder blobs.
And this is the $1 light. These things are actually really great! Good looking, bright, very good tint to be honest, and they come with a little 3AAA battery holder inside with 3 included batteries (sucky ones though)! Went to the store myself this time and picked up a couple more... one for the mod, and one for the car (using Energizer E2's for cold weather reliability).
Size comparison to a standard click lighter.
All this has now brought things to a new level for me, and am currently in a modding frenzy. Got some parts coming in for various other projects, one of which will be dumber than The Choco-lite and Evening Wood combined, but to me, it'll be cool as hell. :devil:
I've really found a new satisfaction in this hobby by doing these mods, and I hope they were fun for people to look at. There's definitely more coming. I get strange ideas all the time, and these won't be the last.
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