I'd try to keep it that way .I know how nasty copper gets after 3 years of being under the sink with water dripping down the side of it ..I'm not sure about clearcoating it and then heating it and cooling it .
Guess the trick is to do nothing let it tarnish and see how hard it is to spiff it back up to showroom condition again
I assume a little polish now and then would let it dull and gain a nice patina with time, the wear points being smoother and shinier than the other parts.
Which now reminds me of the bronze statue of Peter Pan in London's Kensington Gardens. The base is covered with cute forest animals, while the rest of the statue is that dark chocolatey brown you would expect from a bronze - the animals heads are all shiny from a hundred years of children stroking them :)
ALways loved the simple look, such as the F22, and this is simply just right. I just hate the idea that the metal will tarnish. Fingerprints on a more permanent level!! EEEPPP!!
My all time favorite is the original Jetbeam E3P.
Great to hear the non cool whites are coming into fashion! As always, its something that needs to be seen in person before you can really comment on whether you like it or not.
So does the pill assembly/dropin slide down each time the battery is replaced and then it's all pushed back into place when the new battery is inserted?
just saw this thanks to old lumens linking it. ingenious build.
i think it'd look super cool knurled (technically, you don't HAVE to use a lathe...but you could probably buy a lathe off craigslist for the cost of a hand knurling tool lol). I can just imagine what full knurling would look like after weeks of edc - sort of multicolor probably...
> pill assembly/dropin slide down each time the battery is replaced
You can solve that by finding a little rubber ring that will fit snugly behind the pill inside the tube — that was the solution for the same problem with M@g AA dropins sliding back out.
I’ve always wanted to build a flashlight, but don’t (yet?) own a lathe…
Now, my first build will probably look like this (minus the perfection, plus some beginner mistakes)!
I’m late to the party, but this is a gorgeous light! Might just try one my ownself, my last build of a triple impressed my aunt so much with it’s output she wanted one really bad, and she loves copper. So sometimes certain things just kind of go “click” and that’s that!
Thanks Match, another great build even if it’s been in the woodwork for a while.
Match has built some amazing lights and this light I believe was to show what you could do without any type of tools that the normal person would not have. He has inspired more people than me to give light building ago with his simple matter of fact way of putting things across.
Here is a link to his posts. http://budgetlightforum.com/user/313/cmf
If the oxidation bothers you, you can seal the copper with a wax product or a lacquer but then you lose some of coppers greatest traits. Copper naturally kills viruses and bacteria. Copper even kills MRSA and some other antibiotic resistant bacteria. To remove the oxidation you can soak it in lemon juice or a rub down with a jewelers cloth.
I’ve been reading quite a bit and doing a bit of modding thanks to what I’ve found on this board over the last month or two. This thread inspired me to come up with a hardware store build, and I thought I’d share the outcome. The head is a modified SK98 lens setup, although the only reason I went that route is a lack of thread cutting ability with my lathe. I could have had a less elegant, but more DIY solution, but decided I just wanted to get it up and running.
So, here it is. All copper body and pill, brass 3/4” MNPT cap turned into the tail cap, zoomie function works great. Running the QLite driver with 11 of the 7135 chips. Dedomed XML-T6 U3. Single Panasonic 3400mah battery runs 3.6 amps at the tail cap, with a droop to 3.5 amps when it’s fully heated up. The part you can’t see is a copper shim around the inside of the battery tube to keep the battery from rattling in the 3/4” copper pipe.
I’m pleased, this was the first time I’ve ever soldered together copper tubes, and even with lead free solder for the structural connections it all worked out well (besides the 6 destroyed fittings from the building process, thin walled copper tube is my new most hated material to turn on my lathe).