The light has been living in my pocket for one day now together with the victorinox (quite a harsh environment I'd say), and it does show small scratches, but not so much going through the coating yet. The coating is also not as slippery as I am used from the chrome finish on the handlebar of my bicycle.
I'm not too bothered about the finish though, actually I can't wait for it to wear off through the outer layer, next through the copper and then onto bare brass. The light will just get so much cooler over time .
I see from the pictures that you had in your review, that you were able to completely disassemble this light?
I was wondering how you were able to take the tailcap part (the part that’s “behind” the clip) off? I’ve been trying, but it just won’t budge :(…
What I’m really interested in is trying to replace the tailcap switch completely. The stock switch arrangement is really horrible. As you know from taking this apart, there’s an “outer” part of the tailcap switch, that just has the gold-colored button and a spring, and that button pushes on the actual switch (black) that’s inside that tail section.
I’m wondering if I could remove that entire tail section, if I could replace that with, say, a tailcap switch from a Preon, e.g.:
I wonder, even if the threadings match, would that not become very ugly??
However, I do not like the tailcap assembly either, but my personal annoyance is that it is not waterproof, and there is no way I can think of that it can be improved.
Opening up the tail part was indeed a tough job, involving heating up with a small blowtorch and using a benchvise (with a strip of leather to protect the flashlight finish). Like mentioned in the review, it appeared to be glued in, but still had a o-ring.
At this point, I’m less concerned about “ugly”, as I’m finding it pretty much unuseable with the factory switch arrangement. I guess that I have relatively “fat” fingers, so even pressing it two-handed is not working very well for me.
Another idea I had was maybe sticking something like double-side foam tape, to raise the external button a bit. Or maybe get a small rod machined that is a little longer than the one that’s in the very end of the tail piece?
P.S. Might putting the light into a ziploc bag, and then sticking into a pot of boiling water work? Someone suggested that for a problem I had with a different light (a Niteye TF25).
Why is it always the tailcaps are such a pain to disassemble :(??
.