Any solid silver flashlights out there? (Current, not from 50+ years ago)

I just ordered myself a Peak Eiger in brass which got me to thinking. You rarely see flashlights in anything outside of aluminum and stainless steel with occasional titanium versions. Brass is pretty rare and for other metals? ive seen 1 silver flashlight, cant think of the name, lummiwee? or something like that, tiny little light that ran on a single tiny button cell battery and used a single 5mm led. Ive seen a few gold plated ones floating around but thats really about it.

If i had a decent chunk of money id see if Peak would be willing to make me an eiger penlight out of silver. It would be really neat. I wonder what other lights might look good as silver...

Gold!

A few years ago, Peak made up a small run of brass lights which they had gold-plated. Very, very nice, but hard to come by now.

I think PhotonFanatic made a couple of customs out of sterling silver ... ?

Maratac Cu

The maratac copper is an interesting light and i had thought about picking it up myself due to its uniqueness.

Ill have to look around for those photon silver lights see if i can find anything on them.

I guess part of the problem is that so much material is wasted in the machining process that you would lose a lot of money in material that doesn't even end up on your light.
I suppose you could catch the shavings though and sell them to recoup some of the cost?
Maybe a silver blend would make it cheaper?

But I guess if you had a silver flashlight then you have money to spend and you could put jewels on it too or something else extravagant.

Most lights are built for durability, not elegance. Gold is soft. Silver is a little harder, but still quite soft. Both are terrible choices from a durability standpoint. Titanium is hard, durable, does not rust/corrode/oxidize/or require any type of polishing/protective maintenance, very light weight, and it is a rare metal. Personally, I'd choose Titanium over gold or silver. Highly polished titanium is exquisitely elegant visually, as well as to the touch.

I don't know which metals were used to create the mokume-gane lights (copper and silver ???), but there have been a few of those around, too....

dosei-45 said:

Most lights are built for durability, not elegance. Gold is soft. Silver is a little harder, but still quite soft. Both are terrible choices from a durability standpoint. Titanium is hard, durable, does not rust/corrode/oxidize/or require any type of polishing/protective maintenance, very light weight, and it is a rare metal. Personally, I'd choose Titanium over gold or silver. Highly polished titanium is exquisitely elegant visually, as well as to the touch.

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Titanium is deffinately a better material as you say but I wish someone would produce them in the matt titanium finish. I have a couple of titanium watches and they are a sort of mid grey, matt finish. I think it'd look great on a flashlight.

You can media blast Ti to get a similar effect. Look at the McGizmo Haiku with the bead blast finish.

Yes, and also I have two Ti Quarks with the bead blasted finish. A 123x2 Turbo, and the mini AA, and they are two of my favorite lights from the "looks" standpoint.

Lummi, maker of orb raw lights made a batch of silver raw lights about 5 years ago.
Unfortunately, at present, he is experiencing "business problems" that are impacting on many people, as can be seen in the Lummi sub-forum.

I think it was a lummi light that i saw on some UK site a while back. you had to piece the light together from different materiels, etc. gave options for trits to get cut in. Wish i could rememeber for sure. Just remember that the site was a dark grey-blue with black text so it was hard to read anything on it. The tiny little silver light cost a littler over 100 when i was looking. its sad to see the way Lummi went


The beryllium copper lights look pretty neat.

Titanium is something ive never really been interested in. Its a nice metal, but i dont see the justification in extra cost. Theres only a few vendors ive seen release Ti models with competitive pricing. Even though i love penlights, i really dislike the Preon's looks unfortunatly. I did like the polished Ti version a lot more than the satin finish, but i think im in the minority on that one. probably cause every company was and still is doing polished for the most part.
Speaking of polishing, i think i may try and get my Peak brass lights polished to a mirror finish one i get them on friday. should be interesting

I wonder what it would cost to get a light made of silver. something smallish, like the size of a Peak Eiger or AA maratac model?

GrimCreaper said:

I think it was a lummi light that i saw on some UK site a while back. you had to piece the light together from different materiels, etc. gave options for trits to get cut in. Wish i could rememeber for sure. Just remember that the site was a dark grey-blue with black text so it was hard to read anything on it. The tiny little silver light cost a littler over 100 when i was looking. its sad to see the way Lummi went


The beryllium copper lights look pretty neat.

Titanium is something ive never really been interested in. Its a nice metal, but i dont see the justification in extra cost. Theres only a few vendors ive seen release Ti models with competitive pricing. Even though i love penlights, i really dislike the Preon's looks unfortunatly. I did like the polished Ti version a lot more than the satin finish, but i think im in the minority on that one. probably cause every company was and still is doing polished for the most part.
Speaking of polishing, i think i may try and get my Peak brass lights polished to a mirror finish one i get them on friday. should be interesting

I wonder what it would cost to get a light made of silver. something smallish, like the size of a Peak Eiger or AA maratac model?

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If you want a silver light, I'd email or PM Photonfanatic.

The reason why Ti lights are expensive is not only because Titanium is more expensive than Aluminium, but also because its more difficult to machine, especially Grade 5 or Ti-6Al-4V as its otherwise known. Grade 5 Ti is as hard/strong as many Stainless Steel Alloys but won't corrode in salt water and is much lighter than Steel. Although not as conductive as Aluminium either thermally or electrically, it is more than adequate in these respects with responsible design regarding thermal management. For me it is a great material of choice.

easilyled said:

If you want a silver light, I'd email or PM Photonfanatic.

The reason why Ti lights are expensive is not only because Titanium is more expensive than Aluminium, but also because its more difficult to machine, especially Grade 5 or Ti-6Al-4V as its otherwise known. Grade 5 Ti is as hard/strong as many Stainless Steel Alloys but won't corrode in salt water and is much lighter than Steel. Although not as conductive as Aluminium either thermally or electrically, it is more than adequate in these respects with responsible design regarding thermal management. For me it is a great material of choice.

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TI 6AL4V cuts very well, as seen in it's manufacturing popularity. Beta C and some of the old alloys did offer more challenge.

willieschmidt said:

TI 6AL4V cuts very well, as seen in it's manufacturing popularity. Beta C and some of the old alloys did offer more challenge.

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I've heard it said that it uses up machining tools much more quickly though, compared to cutting Al, thus requiring replacing parts more quickly. I've also heard that its quite a lot more time consuming.

I'm not a machinist though and if I'm mistaken, I'll stand corrected.

It's not aluminum but with todays carbide tooling, modern Titanium alloys present little problems.

cones stuff did a review of the sterling orb back in 2005


for his review, click in his link above and then see "Touches" and then "ORB RAW 3W Sterling Silver"

"Solid" silver to me means pure elementary silver. Pure silver, although it has superb electrical and thermal conductivity, is entirely unsuitable mechanically. It is very soft. Sterling silver on the other hand is practical. It is 92.5% silver, with the remaining 7.5% usually copper, is mechanically suitable, and still has excellent conductivity. As mentioned, there have been lights made of sterling silver or similar compounds (Lummi and others). Silver in very recent years has become quite expensive, though. Silver in in the neighborhood of $30/oz these days. Seems to me that is far from ruling it out, even though it is an historic high. People pay anywhere from $300 to $1000 or more for limited production titanium flashlights as it is.

Speaking of esthetic metals, pewter seems like a candidate to me. Pewter is esthetically pleasing, easy to work, not unduly expensive, and does not really tarnish (it just acquires a lovely patina). It is mostly tin (at least 90%), so it probably has considerably better thermal and electrical conductivity than either stainless steel or titanium. I don't happen to be aware of any pewter flashlights.

Nickel silver is another nice esthetic metal, silvery looking. It has no relation to silver at all, however. It is 60% copper, 20% nickel, and 20% zinc. It is probably more practical/suitable than pewter, but on the other hand it has been done (by Lummi at least), so it would be less unique than pewter. For some reason, even with all that copper content, it has poor thermal conductivity; about the same as titanium, worse than stainless steel.