Hi, this is not about flashlights, although it does produce light and can be carried around :-).
Like more flashaholics, I like anything with tritium vials in it, but also like a lot of flashoholics (well, at least many from this beloved forum) I am not particularly rich. I do not own a McGizmo light or any other small light with thick metal parts that you can stuff with lots of trits (actually, some would fit in my $3.99 sk68 clone ), so I decided on a key fob. You can get them on ebay, but I really wanted one of those with more than one vial in it, and I believe there are not many people making them anymore, and that would be pretty expensive too. So I made one myself :-)
Luckily I could get a few of those vials with some discount in a dutch webshop (sorry, they do not ship abroad), so for 15 euro's shipped I was the proud owner of a green, a red, and a purple 20x3.2 mm betalight :-) .
Usually those internet key fobs are made of acrylics, I guess that is because it is a clear plastic that is fairly scratch resistant. I do not know well how to work with acrylics so I decided on polyester casting resin and hope that the material lasts for a while on my key chain.
the vials need to be casted in the middle of the polyester, so I started with a resin layer on the bottom, waited for 1.5 hours for it to reach the gel stage, placed the trits (not perfectly lined up, I never do anything perfectly :-( ), and slowly poored a layer of resin on top. Then I realised that the vials contain gas and may float, luckily they did not.
Two days later the polyester was hardened enough to continue. I pushed it out of the mold, looking good sofar:
Now I roughly sawed the shape of the fob, drilled a hole for the ring, and started sanding, first with rough sandpaper and then finer. I ended with polishing all sides extensively with plain copier paper, I found that that works to get the polyester reasonably shiny.
Now, I could not get the polyester crystal clear, I don't know how to do that, perhaps someone out there has a tip? (polishing with a Dremel and polishing paste does not do the trick). But then, the way it turned out I find pretty nice, and even a perfectly finished fob would look like this in no time when on the key chain for a while:
I am happy with it, it turned out nice, and it was not too hard to make it. It seems sturdy enough to last for years on my key chain, but only time will tell...
I hope you like it too, and that I inspired other people to make one for themselves?? (although I understand that those tritium vials are not everywhere easily obtainable )
Thanks for reading :-)
2019, 12-28 , 5 years later, update in post #25