Do you still own any non LED powered lights?

Yes 3 of them, 2 of them are no name 2 cell lights one D and one AA. One is a Radio Shack 4 C big head thrower light.

Yes, I still have a few.

I still have quite a few non-LED flashlights. They don’t get used anymore and are stored in a box. I’m not sure why I keep them, except that some of them bring back good memories.

I have 1 incan, and I have had it for years, it is a SF G2. It lived in my car, along with an LED version.

I still have plenty of incandescent lights. Here’s my latest acquisition 3D Kel-Lite first generation circa 1968-1969:


Well i must say that after a decade (2008) using only LEDs i am converting back to incans. When i saw super and custom made bulbs, tint, intensity i finally figured it what i was looking for all this time. Now all of my Mag heavy LED mods are stored in a drawer and they have got from 1600lm bulbs up to Osram 64657 14000lm.
I even bought small E size custom made light that has 990lm output from 2x18350.
This is just a quick reply, no pictures.

Me too :confounded:

I still have a bag of incan flashlights in a drawer. I don’t use them anymore.

The best of them is a 4-C Underwater Kinetics dive light. It’s 25 years old, but still quite bright and throwy.

I have a few wolf-eyes with lumens-factory incan upgrades I bought to use for work (these have the battery pos terminal towards tailswitch).

  • A 9-volt 3-cell (3 x CR123A) for which I use 2 x AW 18500 with a D26 sized head. It’s an emergency go-to light in a particular part of the house. Those AW 18500s are quite robust (had them since 2004-2005) as they still charge to max and have ultra low self discharge.
  • A 12-volt light w/ 13-volt conversion (Wolf-Eyes Rattlesnake M90-13V/EO-13 ) - 4 x CR123A with 12V lamp - 3x18650 for 13V lamp. This one is a storage box resident now since its batteries went to other lights (1 went to Solarforce L2 custom with Triple LED Drop-in and the other 2 sitting waiting for emergency back-up action in a Solarforce Masterpiece Pro 2 w/ Cree MC-E Quad die LED…. and another to bind them to darkness and rule them all… sorry got carried away). The lamp has a large bulge near the tip, kinda like a blister per-se, from running it too long and melted the bulb glass… it’s still works if powered up…

I also have couple of MagLite flashlights as well:

  • A well used MagCharger 85 (dead ni-cad battery back) that was given to me but is sitting in the same storage box as the wolf-eyes rattlesnake. I had plans for upgrading that has been on the back burner for ages…
  • A red Mag 2D with the following mods/conversion (It serves as emergency nightstand duty light on the wife’s bedside table):

Lens is a UCL tempered glass lens from Flashlightlens.com
Reflector is a FiveMega Aluminum LOP (light orange peel)
Bulb/lamp is a ROP Lo (Roar of The Pelican - low ouput bulb)
FiveMega 2D-6AA battery conversion pack filled with Eneloops from 2008-2009.
Last but not least, a solder wick spring bypass at the tail cap.

Me too, one of their HID ones, which outlasted my diving days.

I just de-ano’d and cleaned a dirty beaten up old 2C maglite, installed a new reflector and lens, and 7.2V krypton bulb.

Got it running off a couple IMR18490s which fit just perfectly. Normally I enjoy the beam artifacts from an incan, but in this case I’m wondering if I shouldn’t pick up an OP reflector instead?

Next in line is my 3C. I am thinking to bake that one to a nice deep russet/red. Awaiting a G4 socket for that, for some hotwire halogen goodness. A pair of protected 21700s ought to fit just perfectly.

Sputtering 101

Hairspray was also commonly used to lightly sputter a reflector.

It would be a shame to sputter that immaculately mirror polished alumiunium. I’d never get it that spotless again. I can just pick up a ready made OP one from Kai, keep the SMO for another project.

I just got my first Xenon light. A P60 15W Xenon drop-in from Kaidomain. Seems to be about 100 lumens, gets very hot in about a minute, and just one mode. So pretty much useless, but nice CRI and tint!

I have a few of those in different voltages. They’re good fun and seem to be holding up well. I’ve not had one die on me yet.

Usefulness is all relative really. When I was a kid, incans with leaky alkalines and crappy switches were all we had, and xenon was for fancy stuff.

Incans still occupy a happy niche in my collection, and still get used. Some of the modern technology is awesome though. I love it all, new and old.

I own (and Use!) about 20 of them, nothing better than reading a book before bedtime with an old school flashlight :slight_smile:
here`s a few of them:

I have a couple incandescents that I enjoy using around the house. My favorite has an 8AA -> 2D adapter with a PWM voltage regulator and soft start. Beam stays nice and white until the last 10 minutes of runtime. I’d love to make a high-powered custom incandescent regulator for use with Li-ion cells if I had the skills!

Love those old school lights. Nice collection!

Those are ace. How do you keep the switches in good order? A lot of them look like the riveted type.

Mostly just regular use tends to keep the switches working well, I did have to do some repairs when a few of them came and replaced some of the corroded brass and copper parts with pure silver sheet metal cut to shape, and of course liberal use of switch cleaner and elbow grease, but once they`re up and running, regular use keeps them in good working order.

They all run on protected Li-Ion batts as well :smiley: