Endeavour
Flashlight Enthusiast
Hey Folks,
Managed to have a bit of time to tackle this mod this weekend, and thought I'd share a couple of progress shots. The light started out as your standard DSpeck FF2, with the smooth Type III anodizing etc. The finish was such that it pained me to strip it off, but the results were worth it. I'm not sure what DSpeck did exactly as far as the anodizing goes, but it was particularly hard to get off compared to other lights I've had to strip.
After stripping the hard anodizing layer off, the parts went off to the blasting chamber and given a smooth, satin grey finish.
Next, the head and bezel were prepared for a hand polishing job for about an hour to this state:
And finally, the results:
The two bands between the knurls on the case, and the inner portions of the tail retained the bead blasted finish to provide some contrast to the rest of the polished areas. A few things remain left to be done, including polishing the copper center piece to bounce a bit more light out the front end, the installation of an optic (or a reflector, pending optic performance), and a few other minor assembly details. There also are a few other plans for it that I'll wait to mention until I have pictures. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Right now it's running a UX1L Luxeon III Sandwich Module with an NG500 Convertor, even with no optic and an unpolished copper cone for an optical system, the output is pretty good, and heat has been a non-issue during the brief periods of runtime it has had. Should be interesting to do a few comparisons once it's got a more reasonable beam shape against some of my other lights.
Let me know what you think. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
-Enrique
Managed to have a bit of time to tackle this mod this weekend, and thought I'd share a couple of progress shots. The light started out as your standard DSpeck FF2, with the smooth Type III anodizing etc. The finish was such that it pained me to strip it off, but the results were worth it. I'm not sure what DSpeck did exactly as far as the anodizing goes, but it was particularly hard to get off compared to other lights I've had to strip.
After stripping the hard anodizing layer off, the parts went off to the blasting chamber and given a smooth, satin grey finish.
Next, the head and bezel were prepared for a hand polishing job for about an hour to this state:
And finally, the results:
The two bands between the knurls on the case, and the inner portions of the tail retained the bead blasted finish to provide some contrast to the rest of the polished areas. A few things remain left to be done, including polishing the copper center piece to bounce a bit more light out the front end, the installation of an optic (or a reflector, pending optic performance), and a few other minor assembly details. There also are a few other plans for it that I'll wait to mention until I have pictures. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Right now it's running a UX1L Luxeon III Sandwich Module with an NG500 Convertor, even with no optic and an unpolished copper cone for an optical system, the output is pretty good, and heat has been a non-issue during the brief periods of runtime it has had. Should be interesting to do a few comparisons once it's got a more reasonable beam shape against some of my other lights.
Let me know what you think. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
-Enrique
