pd, this one allows the adjustable pot in the center of the spring, I figured with a quad set-up on an 18350 the poor little cell just couldn’t afford the additional drain of a couple of tiny LED’s.

But I’ve got the latest and greatest in quad mcpcb’s and the freshest XP-G3’s and the rarest Khatod Optic and the elusive Tellurium Cu… should count for SOMETHING!

Edit: You’re gonna make me populate the lighted tail cap aren’t ya?

Thanks Dan, appreciate it. I thought of you more than once when I was doing this one, rest assured!

Steve, I got the brass ring in tight with no holes drilled by using the point on a cutting tool. It had a sleek look that I wanted to keep, but the dang rubber post inside the boot was too long and the light wouldn’t tail stand without changing modes! So I had to drill the little holes so I could unscrew the retaining ring and get the boot out for that simple shave mod. Sure looked sleek without the tweezer holes. Oh well, I’ll probably put some LED’s and potentiometer on the switch board, it’ll give it that one more special look.

Showed it off tonight to a couple of Special Forces guys and they were totally freaked by the output and size. Got out the Trustfire TR-J20 and the guy was showing me money, wanted it bad! lol (13,500 lumens)

Ran it walking the trash can down to the road, pretty much a 10 minute walk, then those guys and the ex-cop neighbor used it for a while, ultimately came in to a cell down to 3.7V even though it’d been on for most of 30 minutes. So it works out really nice, carries easy, isn’t prone to slip even without gripping it firmly due to that double ridge in the middle. All in all a very handy light. The Khatod optics really make a difference, offering throw that the Carclo’s just can’t do.

Nice try Pat!

I was drugged Tuesday, from Monday nights issues, DHL brought new Cutter T-Pad quad boards Tuesday around 2:00 in the afternoon and I had just gotten the new XP-G3’s last week. I felt the need to use the new boards so I grabbed up the components needed… I’ve got small Omten and large Omten switches, but I don’t have switch boards sitting around. I only had the lighted board because someone was nice enough to give me a couple to play with. At any rate, I grabbed what was readily available and headed out to the shop. I didn’t even take a rubber boot out there, so I guesstimated how thick the overall stack would be with the switch pcb, switch, cover plate and boot, cut the necessary pocket into the end of the battery tube and threaded it. Winging it, as it were. I remember pilotdog68 saying these pcbs were very robust and I didn’t need to worry about a through-board bypass, so it made sense to use one here.

The sedative I take is Ativan, used to sort of reboot my system. I have stress and/or cold related muscle spasms (medically referred to as a Conversion Disorder), if I get chilled it can happen and I can get a chill from a breeze on a 105º day when I’m sweating. Difficult to know really just what starts the process, even after nearly 16 years of it. I only take the sedative when the spasms make my head shake violently side to side. This has occurred often enough that over the years that now I get an instant splitting headache and Monday night it was bad enough to make me nauseous. So Tuesday, I had the micro concussion feeling as well as the left-over sedation… groggy, bit of a stagger, probably shouldn’t have worked on the lathe at all. I didn’t go out til like 2:30PM, but then I didn’t come back in til just after 8:30! Lost all track of time, but had TexasLumens’ voice nagging me about safety and keeping fingers and such. lol So yeah, I was making the effort to be careful, but did start getting hurried considering the time and that I hadn’t eaten and darkness was taking over. (the rats move into the shed at dark, and possibly a skunk, so I try to be gone…) I live in the country, there’s cattle fields surrounding the shed and hay stacked outside one wall, heck the adjoining section of shed is a stall and hay loft! So the varmints are to be expected, even if it’s a bit eerie.

As far as mad skills or the use of the lathe, it’s Justin’s fault. It’s all Justin’s fault. Him and his crazy Scratch Build Challenges. That’s where it all started for me back with the .50 BMG flashlight build. So his challenge started it, now the lathe that came from him (and BLF) and so it goes, isn’t that always how “mad scientists” get created?

Appreciate the compliments, really I do, am humbled.

When you learn to do things, you also criticize your work. Shoulda done this, coulda done that… and sometimes you re-do things that should have been left alone! I now have to take this DBC2 back apart and address how the driver is mounted. I need to make a threaded brass retaining ring to hold it down firmly and make better ground contact and will probably have to cut some threads off the end of the battery tube to keep fitment proper. (Sounds simple enough, right? I’ll probably have to seat the driver a bit deeper in the copper, so I’ll have to be cutting down into the hole where the threads are, easy to mess up copper threads by the way!)

Scary, as I really really like how the light is right now. But you know, it’s an addiction…

For the record, the head is 33mm in diameter, smaller sections of battery tube are 23mm while the raised sections are 28.6mm. Overall length is 92.8mm. It weighs 181 grams with an Efest purple IMR18350 cell installed.

Will, I thought about a before and after pic while on the way out to make changes, so I grabbed my 20D and took a quick shot, turned it off and went to the shop. When I was done I picked back up the 20D and took another shot. I THOUGHT I had put it in manual, but it must have been in Aperture Priority… that or I bumped a control wheel in handling it which is why Pro’s use Pro Bodies, those kinds of inadvertent settings changes don’t happen with a Pro body like a 1DsMkII but with the consumer level cameras, juggling flashlights and cameras and what not can lead to a wheel getting bumped. Shutter speed would have been controlled by the large wheel on the back of the camera, the easiest one to mess up with, so that’s probably what happened. I seldom use the 20D, my primary camera is the 1DsMkII. Both the 5DMkII and 7DMkII will easily suffer the same issue as the 20D, as will the G1X. Too many cameras…

The shot with the Carclo was at f5.6, 1/60, ISO800
The shot with the Khatod was at f5.6, 1/30, ISO800

Which is why it looks so much brighter. Sorry about that. I was “focusing” on the beam profile and spot size, totally missed the settings difference.