Do you still own any non LED powered lights?

Yes

This one is prolly 50 years old torch made in DDR, for the young ones: Deutschen Demokratischen Republik :sunglasses:

With its original bulb…i think it will outlast even my sons

Time to upgrade to a Convoy L6!

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!