my wife bought this light at a garage sale for 25c (with good batteries!) and a friend just gave me his ancient mini-lathe, so the 2 together plus a 4th July camping trip gave me a perfect excuse to LEDify it.
Angry rust monster
Coleman lantern
LED pedestal/ heatsink cut from some round bar stock my lathe-giving friend left me
Good start! Seems like everyone is getting a lathe now.
Nicely done on both scores.
What type of LED/driver setup do you plan on installing?
pedestal mounted into lid/ switch
starting to work on wiring it up and getting the switch to work (which was a complete and total pain in the butt)
driver is a simple 2x AMC7135 board with 2 38K chips scavenged off a KD V2 3A board (it's cheaper than buying the things separately!). LED is a spare XP-G R5 CW (I think). I'm especially pleased with the tiny hex screws that I scavenged from an old microscope filter wheel :)
In place - the narrow tip of the pedestal was 5min epoxied into the black switch thing.
I decided to try and use parts of the existing switch, which was a good idea poorly executed. I spent several hours cutting and grinding those contacts until they didn't short against the heatsink (they still can if you give the light a sharp tap :(), actually separated when off, moved smoothly and so on and so forth. Not a lot of fun.
I decided to use the existing metal rod system to connect the driver/ LED to the battery in the base. My treasured Hakko iron came in handy here as I could crank up the heat to solder the nuts on the rods.
all connected
the tops of the rods had to be cut down as one of them was shorting against the driver somehow
now the battery :)
I had some 18650s spare from a recycled laptop pack that I thought I could use, plus a spare 3 cell holder, a PCB and a miniUSB li-ion charger board. It didn't quite work out well as the 18650s didn't seem to play nice with the PCB (high freq flickering for 3-4min before they settled down), so I had to use a spare protected 18650 instead.
battery holder
charger board
in place
close up of the charging port
with cover on
charging
light is red when charging, blue when charged. The holes are there to feed the vent at the bottom of the white plastic diffuser that the LED sits in, which vents out of the top, hopefully making some kind of "chimney" effect.
It works!
It was absolutely fantastic for camping. Enough light to play a board game on the picnic table or to get the kids into their PJs but not so much that it was too bright to read by. As far as I could tell by holding onto the little pedestal nub that pokes through the switch (must remember to measure more carefully next time! It was supposed to be flush with the top) it didn't get warm at all, even after being on for a couple of hours. Charging from the car charger was painless and we have a bunch of miniUSB wall warts around. I've converted one of my commuting bike lights to USB charging and the front one is next, it's just so convenient.
I'd like to figure out why those scavenged 18650s weren't working right as they fit that holder better and should give a ~6Ah battery instead of the 2.6Ah cell I have in there, which I also need for another project. I might try a different PCB when it arrives, just in case it was a duff one (previous one I bought from DX seems to work fine with another scavenged cell from the same pack).
sorry, 2nd half of the post took a bit longer than expected 
I’ll look up the links of where I bought the bits’n’pieces if anyone’s interested.
thanks! I’ve been a die hard dremel and drill guy for the last few years so now I have something new to learn (and more tools to buy, woohoo!). 1in.sq. alu tubing still has a place in my heart and I have 5ft left in the garage to use, so I’ll still be doing stuff out of that too
Impressive! First project I have seen that incorporates the charging board.
thanks, they’re awesome little things. I got the idea off here, when someone was talking about sticking on the chips the 5V>li-ion chargers use into a flashlight. Some eBay searching later and I now have 4 of them
The first one I used was in a rear bike light
front light is next, with an XM-L and 1.8A KD driver! No more fumbling around in the snow or rain fixing batteries to the bike for me 
Another great mod! Have you ever thought about selling some lights?
Love it. Well done.
Nice!
Normally, I like to hike and then camp so I’m not much of a fan of lanterns, but that looks great for car camping or patio duty. Is it single mode? also, how is the water resistance?
Very Nice! Love the USB charging setup!
Thanks for posting this mod.
Very nice, matt. Look forward to seeing some fancy lathe work in your bike lights!
:8) thanks! I :heart_eyes: those charger boards
I agree, if you had to carry this in your backpack, it wouldn’t be much fun! The diffuse, omnidirectional light makes it really pleasant to use compared with a head torch or flashlight - I hardly used the ones I took, but used this lantern a great deal. I have plans to make another, much smaller camping light that’ll be a bit bigger than a standard size RC li-po battery, which would be much more suitable for hiking.
Driver is single mode
http://kaidomain.com/product/details.S008617
I stripped the AMC chip off it ages ago, so just soldered two of the 38K chips onto the spare pads. It’s as simple as it gets, driver wise
Water resistance = passable. The switch and pedestal are sealed at the top and the top vent is underneath an overhang, same with the holes in the base. So, if it gets left out for a minute or two in a light shower, it’ll probably be ok. If it gets dropped in a river, it’ll fill up pretty quickly.
thanks!
thanks. I’ve thought about it quite a bit, but it takes me ages to make a light (this one was 15h+!) and the parts alone usually cost me more than the bike lights you can get from China, so it just wouldn’t be worth it. Plus, if I was doing it for money, it would become a job and not something I do for fun.
Well done.
And congratulations on the score(s)
What a nice looking lathe that is. It looks like a cross of an old Singer sewing machine and a watch makers lathe. Love it.
The mod is totally nice too. So nice to see you use a charging board, a 18650 holder and a big old lantern in the same mod. This is good stuff. Thank your for sharing it. Love the pictures.
Nicely done .
thanks. Funnily enough, the next light will most likely be an Old-Lumens inspired Maglite mod But, after that, I’m slowly cogitating over a plan for a new helmet light to replace this (1st LED light, lots of questions | Page 2 | Mountain Bike Reviews Forum) functional but ugly light. Partly so I can use Cateye mounts for all my lights, partly so I can fit a different driver and run a 2 cell vs. 3 cell battery (less weight on the helmet). Still, at least now what I can make is largely a function of what I can imagine and skills I can learn rather than the tools I have!
thanks!
thanks, I love it! It looks so steam punk I keep expecting to put coal in it somewhere. An on-off switch would be nice though. I love making old stuff useful and make something people view as junk or disposable into something really cool that makes them go “wow”. I’m not sure the lathe will make anyone say that anytime soon, but you get the point
Are you going to install a charging port in that too? Or is it just going to run off of AAs/Ds?
well, now you mention it, that might not be a bad idea The end cap should be big enough, although I haven’t fiddled with one to check. If I can figure out a way of doing so that still allows me to unscrew the cap (running the +ve current through the body?) then I’ll definitely go for it. It’s no. 3 on the list though, so it won’t happen for a while 
HA! I know exactly what you mean by that. Kindred spirits it sound like. Soo cool to follow what you end up with for this one. I love restoring old tools and making them look good but not like new. Dings and faded paint can give soul to the inanimate.