Justin used to sayā¦ it is what it is, yāall know I aināt got sense enough to leave modding alone, regardless of how I feel. 
Lanterns are popular this year, first three entriesā¦.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I WONāT be building a lantern. 
Iām thinking of making a thrower, using the 200mm condenser lens from Edmund Optics, maybe with the focusing aspheric I removed from a Canon ultra wide angle lens. Just have to figure out if I can make the 4-jaw chuck work on the lathe and what materials I need to get as compared to what I have on hand. Havenāt decided on emitter, thinking about the SBT-70 for itās round die. That would, of course, reduce throw considerably but would give a fantastic pattern and possibly 2000 lumens from a 3V emitter. I canāt see much over a mile anywayā¦
Sounds amazing Dale. I hope I have internet access OS. :+1:
hope we see some realy nice builds again this year.
unsure at this stage if I will enter anything.
all the best to all
B
U
M
P
And another BUMP. 
Too many things going bump in the night around here! Dang near shot my monitor!
Oh, and uh, a friend gave me some bits and pieces, absolutely gorgeous bits and pieces, that may have me going a different direction in this build.
See what my friend gave meā¦.
Mokume Gane and Titanium Damascus, both about 30mm x 40 mm. So, a new challenge is bornā¦ what to make with these 2 gorgeous pieces of exotic bar stock?
Oh wow! :heart_eyes:
Well, those are prettyā¦ What can you make out of two 30mm x 40mm pieces? Theyāre a bit short and wide for most flashlight shapes.
Could be a set of ten keychain-sized 10180 lights, or maybe combined for a 26350 thrower, or maybe split up for three 14500 lights.
Could make the Timascus into a head and tail, and the Mokume-gane the mid-section, adding a portion of pure copper for the pill. Quad-bore the Mokume-gane for 4x14500 in series and make the light a triple or quad XHP-35 mini-powerhouse!
Or just a 30000 lumens camping lantern ā¦
That would be something Daleās style :sunglasses:
Those are some pretty nice pieces! I donāt know what youāll do, but Iām sure it will be classy!
Good luck! Looking forward to see your thread as well :+1:
Yāall are killin me! :laughing:
Yāallās math is horrible though. Side by side 14500ās take up almost 30mm of space, these are only 29.8mm wide. 4x 14500 would need a much fatter piece. Nice try though. But of course the 40mm length also isnāt compatible with 50mm long cells. Oh well.
BUT, David is onto something, which Iāve already been laying out. A Quad with a copper engine, 16340 cell powering an LED4Power 4A driver in constant current, with the copper/brass as the body and caps of the Titanium damascus top and bottom. I REALLY want it to be a side switch, that would solve some space problems, but donāt know if I can pull that off and sure donāt want to mess up this gorgeous piece of Mokume Gane tryingā¦ probably heat color the Titanium a rich blue to oppose the orange of the copper. Should be interestingā¦
Doesnāt have to be mega powerful, the 80 CRI Samsung LH351Dās at 5000K should suffice to make a nice beam profile and decent color, but Iāll look into that aspect more later as TK is telling me the Carclo optics donāt play all that nicely with her Samsungs.
Jewelry grade light, havenāt done that before! lol
(Hmmmm, 4x10440ā¦ā¦ )
Oh yeah! This is gonna be awesome to watch! :partying_face:
Thatās some gorgeous metal. I canāt wait to see what you come up with, Dale!
Bump 
Iām going to be throwing my hat into the ring soon. I have a number of projects in mind that Iāve been wanting to build for a while though some of them would probably be too complex for this contestās time frame given my stack of lifeās other obligations and basically a total lack of budget right now. So this will have to one of the simpler ideas floating around in my head. That said, it will be one of my more useful lights if I can build it the way I want, with a proper U/I.
Unfortunately, Iām not very knowledgable with electronics or programming still so I will have to use an existing driver with existing firmware.
Light body will be hand made with a minimum of power tools, since both my mill and lathe are non-functional at the moment. Lathe needs a gearbox repair, and mill is 3 phase in a single phase shop and right now I canāt afford the VFD I want to use as a phase converter.
Sketches forthcoming as soon as I solidify some ideas. Right now I want to build a simple proof of concept test mule before I get all fancy with making the body.
Hints:
It will not be cylindrical.
It will be small enough for neck lanyard wear.
It will not be like anything else out there.
Probably mostly copper. But I do have some aluminum, and stainless I could use as wellā¦still waffling on that.
Hmm. Maybe Iāll build 2.