3rd Annual DIY Contest - prize light builds, OL and the Duck square off, OL wins!

Saved, for a rainy day.

It rained today so I’m switching to post #2. In the last episode I was reaming the ID of the fins for some reason and remembered why. The reflector body is 21.75mm OD and the sleeve the fins slipped over was around 21.somethingorotherlessthanthat ID. So that got done. Since the outer copper piece is only 22.35mm ID that means the sleeve piece averages ~ .3mm or less in wall thickness. Not sure how well this will track but the threaded piece that needs to slip into the fins is 3/4”copper pipe with an OD of 22.32mm so I mounted it on a 5/8” drill bit wrapped with tape and spent a few hours removing .6mm from the diameter. Yay it finally fits! One end of the fin section needs to get cut off. It was only there to act as a sandwich for the fins. After cutting I ground most of the remaining excess off and sanded the rest flush. Now the fins have threads. I’ll leave you with a teaser. Still much to do before it can make whoopee light but it looks pretty sexy already.

Not much to show for a fair amount of work, mostly cleaning, fitting, and polishing but did get the pill drilled for wires and cut down to a useable length. Also milled a driver shelf which took an inordinate amount of time to remove such a small amount of copper. Spent too much time figuring the length of the pill or might have had it soldered up as well.

Stuff I got done today
Soldered the two pill sections together and of course it was crooked so I had to fix that and pretinned the edge for ground soldering the driver
Reflowed the emitter onto the star and verified operation with a 6V battery.
AA’d the star to the pill.
Assembled the head parts with JB weld(fins, head body, internal bezel threads).
Put together the driver with moon parts, 6V parts, NTC, tinned copper pillar, awg20 Teflon emitter wires, and fujik potting.
Some pics without narrative.

Some more pics sans text.

Added about a dozen coats of lacquer.

Subscribed, for a rainy day ;-)

Subscribed, for any day.

Subscribed. As the betterlucknextimeseeyoulaterfoist prize is the only one I have any hope of winning, I’ll be watching this with interest. :slight_smile:

Rainy day amusement? Ok.

Subscribed, with gullible :heart_eyes: eyes ready to be mesmerized and awestruck.

Sounds great. Your mini mags are awesome. Wondering how you are going to deal with the thinner material of a 502b.

Are you going to compete this year?

EDIT: Fixed wording above.

This will be in lieu of a competition build and breaks the rules of engagement anyway by starting with an existing host. Just a way to join the fun without competing.

^Sounds good. There are enough scary talented competitors.

Fixed my wording in the post you replied to.

Hmmmm, P60 and RBD. That sounds interesting. But, how about a little "not in the contest" shootout between you and me? Since I chose to stay out of it, because I had other issues, (well not those issues, I've had those issues all my life), I could play around with a couple P60 hosts I have lying around and we can do a little "mano a mano" ourselves, just for fun. Whatchathink?

That way there are two lights for prizes, or surprises.

What would be better than a fully modded P60 light as a prize?

Two fully modded P60 lights! Go for it guys! :)

Game on! You had suggested something like this as a forum wide comp a while ago and it’s still a good idea. A competition within the competition. Goggles on, gloves off.

If the duck loses will he go wading in OL's lake?

He will wade in his own lake of tears.

Mayhap at some point a challenge will be issued to build a particular light, see what everyone can do given the same starting place. What an interesting concept.

OL would start with a MiniMag and make it a monster, BDuck would chop it down and macro it, complete with fins. lol Me? I’d mess it up and file it in the circular with Steve’s. lol

No, you would turn it into a bullet light.

And n10sivern would build an under barrel launcher, while TexasPyro shoots the range footage and gathers data. Maybe next time.

You are starting to know me a little too well :wink:

Only what you choose for me to know. :wink:

Google is an amazing wealth of information.