Zen and the art of flashlight maintenance.

I like torches.

I prefer it when they work.

I know a lot of people feel like that, and for some people a flashlight's non-performance can be fatal, although this is thankfully rare.

In this respect, I think there's an unhelpful focus on the gadget itself, rather than the user.

Many popular handgun designs are nearly 100 years old. They're 3rd. generation technology, comparatively old concepts formerly hand fitted and now rendered economically viable by the evolution of CNC manufacturing. There's a damn sight more engineering in a handgun than there is in a torch, and it WILL be tested (proofed) before you get to fire it. The point being that building a good flashlight is engineering childs play.
If your life depends on a flashlight, strip it and rebuild it, know how it works and how it can fail just as you would a gun. Tweak it. Caress it. Sleep with it.

There's a saying, something like... "the most important item on a rifle is the nut behind the butt".

Plenty of people been shot with ugly guns. The AK47 is the most produced assault rifle design in the world not least for it's having that highly desirable quality in a firearm, the propensity to go off when the trigger is pulled. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If I wanted to spend say, $300 on a flashlight, I would draw it up in SolidWorks and get someone with better CNC equipment (and workshop skills) than mine to cut and finish it to a standard set by me in a material chosen by me.

If I'm not sure about the performance of the optics I can get a pretty good idea by doing some ray-tracing.

I just can't come to terms with a commodity flashlight that costs more than an excellent digital camera, especially when I think about the aspheric lenses, battery management, charger and accessories - the comparatively huge design effort and number of complex manufacturing and handling operations - wow!

Unless it's being purchased in numbers as part of some government acquisition programs, that is. I'm not saying GI is not good quality, sometimes it's the absolute best, but people of every colour of the political spectrum recognise that very often it is overpriced.

I'm not talking about e.g an Orb Raw Sterling Silver which has exclusivity and is made from intrinsically expensive material.

It's just that I suspect that the future may be one in which disposable or rather recyclable flashlights will represent the largest share of the market much as is now the case for razors or pens. You can't really get a cutting-edge (sic) wet shaving tool that didn't start out exactly the same as one that somebody else just threw away.

I can find a Remington SPR 453 12-gage autoloading shotgun for $299! How much fun can you have with that?

Oh, and there's a book by a guy called Pirsig...

Get a life, get some skills and get a sense of achievement that comes from something more than being able to blow more money on a torch than would probably keep more than one person alive for a year in the third world.

Above all, get a sense of proportion.

w

I know, I know - and I'll get a sense of humour.

I'm doing my bit by buying lights from third world countries!!
Greg

Man, that was a beautiful post.

These days more and more flashlights have more and more electronics in them, and if it isn't direct drive, I for one will have no idea how to repair it. I like flat regulation as much as the next guy, but if that circuitry fails for any reason, there won't be anything I can do to fix it. So yeah, in a way they are disposable. In contrast, if any part of a Maglite fails, I can replace it or mod it to use a different part. It's not such a great light, but it will still be there years from now, when we are laughing at those silly and anemic Cree lights that are top of the line right now.

Believe it or not, but there are some R&D costs for flashlight manufactures that actually do R&D rather than copy other companies' hard work. In considering price, remember the volume of sales as well. Some of the higher end lights are niche markets.

volume is true, camera's are expected to sell millions, even the cheapies, a custom flashlight way less, and the high end lights maybe thousands. but it's good to be grounded sometimes, then back to the skies batman!

Geez, I really love that book "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenace". I was hoping the OP was going to talk more about some of the premises of the book as they relate to flashlights.

I remember in the book the main character talking about how a non-functioning motorcycle was only worth the cost of a common nut because it was seized up and couldn't be removed, and therefore the bike could not be repaired. Just one of the life lessons that I learned from that book.

Flashlights are the same way. One $.20 part in the clickie goes bad and the flashlight might be just about worthless. Most people are far more dependent on technology (that they don't understand) than they realize.

By the way, I highly recommend the above book to anyone. That and a few books by Richard Bach are my favorites.