4th Annual BLF/OL Scratch Made Light Contest- Hand Made 10/31 finished

I did a Google search and not much comes up. In images it shows a couple of your pictures.

Link

Thanks. It certainly works well.

It does. I giggled with glee the first time I used it. Even now it’s a great to see the practically instantaneous change. I used to solder as much as I could, now I braze wherever possible.

Rufus, You make my head hurt!!! You take the cake at bringing a bucket of parts together into a work of art. The wood is just stunning. Great work!!! TL

Thanks TL, a long way to go still and a lot more parts to fill the bucket.

A painful but productive couple of days but heck, if it didn’t hurt I’d be working and getting nothing done. :+1: First off, I drilled out the brass sheet, first with a step drill to 1/4” then with a 5/8” hole saw and finished it off with a dremel sanding drum and ran the 20 x 1 mm tap through it to finish the threading. After that I cut some of the excess from the copper core. I need a place to put an o-ring between the head and the tube and this piece I cut the bezel threads from should work nicely(shown before the previous cut). Before cutting off the part I want to use I tapped threads for a few mm. This hand cutting bites but my reciprocating saw is most definitely a two handed tool. I’ll get back to this piece in a bit but I also need to fabricate the place where it goes. For that I need a P60 brass pill and some brass tubing. First thing to do is run the threads the rest of the way up the pill. Not having the approved tool holders and such I’m making do. Poor little pill, this will hurt me more than it hurts you. Well, maybe it will hurt a little but fair is fair. Some time in the future it will get brazed to a short section of this brass tubing. And that other chunk of brass will thread onto it capping the wood of the battery tube at one end. That piece is over 5 mm thick and will end up only 3mm or so(just enough for the notch to cover a 1.5mm o-ring and have a bit of thread). The tube piece will have the switch inside and fit inside a newly remade battery tube. While I had the hack saw out I cut another one. Not easy cutting left handed when you’re a righty. After a bit of time, annealing, filing and fitting(I clamped the file in the vise so I could push/pull on the part lefty), I applied plenty of flux, slipped on two brass collars and a copper one, and brazed it. I didn’t want the copper piece to braze, just act as a belt to hold the joint closed so I didn’t flux under it except at the joint itself. No flux>no brazing and I could easily remove most of the collar. The fine line on the left is the brazed seam, so is the blobby crap on the right where I had to add more after booting it around the floor some. Check in after the week end to see how it turns out after cleanup and tapping.
Grinding along

Sawing by hand is hard enough, I hate to think of doing it “wrong” handed. :frowning:

You have me pondering my scrap box of brass and copper again. :smiley:

Looking good
Your dog would be at home with my mob

I’m following real closely RBD. Amazing work. I understand whats going on as much as I understand LTP post were spell check has worked its charm. :+1:

Enjoying EVERY image! The hours are adding up Rufus!!! Tons of skill and patience! :beer: :beer: :beer:

Thanks for sharing. TL

I’ll agree about the hours adding up anyway.

Not much to show but did successfully tap the threads in the replacement tube. Also did some grinding on the brass collar. Since these pics I’ve done more filing and sanding on the tube and still need to do a lot more to the collar. The tube walls were originally 1 mm thick and now are .8 mm at the non threaded end tapering back to full thickness at the threaded end and I’ll remove a bit more yet, maybe to .6-.7mm to lighten it further.

Collar and tube

If you want to lighten it more without the effort couldn’t you just use a brighter light source? :person_facepalming:
Sorry. That is certainly thin walled. What is the brass collar being used for? something in the head I gather.

:person_facepalming: Exactly! :stuck_out_tongue: Aussies, Aussies Aussies. TL

That took a whopping tap didn’t it?? The Brass looks super clean! Can’t wait to see this beauty when it’s fully cooked!!

TL

I’m using a 20 x 1 mm tap. It’s too big for any tap wrench I have so I’m using a 10” crescent. I soldered the tube into a big ol’ brass nut so it could put it in the vise and used a combination of plastic tubes as a centering jig for the tap(the same ones used for the copper head core). Then desoldered it and started filing and sanding. I’m using the collar the same way you are Steve, to capture the wood at one end after I’ve brazed a stop collar to the tail end. I can’t braze one on the head end too or my nice wood will go up in smoke. There’s another short tube that fits into this one(at least it will when I’ve had my say) and that one has the 20 mm brass pill brazed to it that the collar threads onto. If you remember the first tube attempt had threads at both ends but that requiered reinforcement/thickening sleeves at both ends and I’d have to allow for the sleeves when reaming the wood tube. Since I need the short, inner tube to house the switch module anyway I decided to eliminate the internal threading and external collar. This will get rid of the void between the collars, allow me to pare down the tube, and subsequently reduce the overall thickness of the wood tube as well. If you follow all that I should fly you here so you can finish it for me.

One of my design guidelines is that whenever I use a manufactured part I don’t want it to look like what it was, especially if it shows like the bezel or this stop collar and had I left it six sided as it was it would have been both much heavier and too reminiscent of an L2.

The “big ol’ brass nut” is the other cap nut of the 3/4” compression fitting I’ve been using for some other parts, namely the bezel, bezel threads, and stop collar. Compared to their original forms and sizes witness protection should be so good. Most of the rest of the host is tube and sheet stock cut, rolled, thickened or thinned, and threaded, mostly by hand even though the drill press figures prominently. A good deal of time is spent staring at a pile of stuff trying to figure out how to put it together. The picture I drew early on is a guide to bounce ideas from and a visual aid but like Goose, it can’t talk to me. When I figure a section out I do as much with it as I can before I run out of gas or need to stop to allow some other section to catch up. Atm, the areas still a bit soft are the switch module and tail cap, I think most everything else is solid.

Rufus, When I get out your way, I want a lesson in HOW to keep a tap threading straight with a 10” crescent. :exclamation: If I tried that, there is no telling how the threads would come out but you can bet they wouldn’t look like yours!!

We have been adding some carbon fiber to a light or two here and I was glad to see how you & MRsDNF cover the ends on your wood pieces. That makes a nice look the way you did that.

Nice work… to say the very least. I sure have been enjoying these builds. :+1: THANK YOU!!! TL

What can I say? I cheat. :wink: It’s the guide tube surrounding both the brass and the tap that keeps it in line. .