Can the Fenix TK 30 take the recoil of 375 H&H

I would like to know if the TK 30 can take the recoil of 375 H&H. I have mounted one on the scope of the 375, but was not sure it can take the recoil. The light dose throw and covers enough area to get the job done. I do hunt pigs at night and holding the TK 30 in one hand and shooting the 375 with the other is not a very good idea at night with a 200+ pound plus boar with razor sharp tusks.

Pallathal

Wow that is a serious caliber. Call Fenix see what they say. They probably have no idea what 375 hh is. Lol. You colud also call Surefire they make a bunch of weapon lights. Most light manufacturers test their lights on 223 Remington or 5.56 which is a lite recoil caliber. I dont know any light manufacturer that test on the 375hh. I doubt anybody does. Off topic - that said if you live in US then 280 Remington is basically 7mm bullet that is plenty for 200 pound pig. Use a 165 grain bullet that should take care of it. SD is the key here.
You may have better luck with AR15 type platform in 308 Win that can mount a light. You should be able to find one. 165 grain at the minimum.
If you find a light that can stand the recoil of 375 hh let us know.

The main form of long-term damage is:

Battery impact
Recoil vibration

A springy spacer between the battery and light head can help keep the battery from pounding the chips out the front. Vibration is up to the potting of the components.

Besides the things already mentioned - I would keep a second flashlight (maybe even the same type) on the belt in case the one mounted on the gun stops working - which wouldn't surprise me. That way you would not be standing in the dark for long.

Cheers
Thorsten

Thanks for your reply. Will have to wait till they come up with something that can take the recoil of big guns.

Pallathal

Every light I've ever seen has the spring at the tail, so the initial impulse of the recoil will only push the batteries towards the head, as if to extend the spring (if that were possible), so I wouldn't worry about the spring or potential vibration.

All in all, the recoil of a rifle really is a pretty smooth acceleration (though violent as your shoulder will attest), thus the light experiences a powerful acceleration as opposed to a true impulse load like a hammer strike.

That said, the only potential weak link I can imaging is how well the emitter is fixed to the heat sink/pill. Providing you stick with a top of the line manufacturer like Fenix, that shouldn't be a problem.

Best regards,
John C.

malkoff/surefire or malkoff/elzetta, and either one with a rotary tailcap, would seem like the best bet to me. If you limit yourself to the M60/M61 drop-ins and a host bored for a single 18650, then you can have a single battery suspended between two springs. Make the battery either IMR or the new PSS cells, and I think that is about as robust you can get in current manufacture.

Just a FYI, the pertinent issue would be recoil velocity, not recoil energy. If the .375 H&H is in a reasonably heavy rifle, it will have a lot of recoil energy but its recoil velocity will be modest (I did own one of these for a while, BTW). A much more severe test is a ~6.75 lb 18" bbl shotgun with 1 7/8oz 3" magnum loads (I had one of those too). A lighter gun with a reasonably heavy bullet weight will go from stationary to traveling backward at X ft/sec velocity, with that number 'X' being substantially greater than from a .375 H&H. Short version, if a flashlight can withstand being on a shotgun, you're good to go IMO. This is handy since more folks are familiar with shotguns than olde English chamberings.

FWIW my .356 Winchester '94 hits me a lot harder than my .375 H&H did, even though the .375 had perhaps double the muzzle energy and substantially more recoil energy. The Winchester '94 is a relatively light rifle that can come back at considerable velocity when using a 250 grain bullet, even when muzzle energies are relatively modest.

I'd worry about the added mass messing with the scope during recoil, but I'm short on experience just knee-jerking.
Seems like the best bet would be to use a light designed from the ground up as a weapon light, or a well potted light with a power cord to the cells either off the rifle or oriented 90 degrees to the recoil.

Kestrel said:

Just a FYI, the pertinent issue would be recoil velocity, not recoil energy.

Click to expand...

Sorry, but you are incorrect. Velocity can only be achieved after an initial acceleration (velocity = distance/time, which is a steady state condition). In the case of a rifle shot, the initial energy is immediately reacted by the shoulder of the shooter, so no steady state condition ever exists until the rifle has been brought to a stop (acceleration followed by immediate deceleration).

Acceleration = force/mass (force of the chamber pressure pushing against the backside of the projectile divided by the mass of the system), therefore it is indeed the initial acceleration of the recoil (aka recoil energy), that imparts energy into the components of the rifle, such as an attached flashlight, and not the velocity.

The deceleration of the system back to the static condition provides the equal and opposite forces to satisfy the equations of equilibrium, but at a much more dampened rate compared to the initial acceleration.

In an attempt to keep this thread on topic, I would add that the deceleration of the rifle and its components into the shooter's shoulder would work to compress the spring of the flashlight, but as the shoulder reaction is dampened significantly to that of the initial acceleration, then no worries, especially with quality hardware like a Fenix light.

Best regards,
John C.

Here is one table about rifles recoil:
http://www.chuckhawks.com/recoil_table.htm