What worked for me was to put a “Sunshine polishing cloth” on a flat surface, then rub the lens on it for ~20 minutes. This reduced lumens by about 3% to 4%, and improved the tint. Basically, doing this removes the plus-green filter built into the lens. It’s a very slight effect though, barely perceptible.
To protect the table, I put the polishing cloth on top of the plastic bag it came in.
The price and pictures make me think that it is legit sapphire though, and they do not fail the droplet test: (left and middle “sapphire”, right plain uncoated glass)
I compared the hotspot (350mA through the led) of my FW3A before and after lens swap. Mind that my FW3A has FA3 tint bin 95CRI SST-20 leds (that TA had sent me a few samples of ) that are 97CRI and have great tint already before the lens swap. Left with stock lens, right with sapphire lens.
So the uncoated sapphire lens made the light a tiny bit warmer and a tiny bit closer to the BBL, or more correct: the stock AR-coated lens cools the light a tiny bit and moves the tint a tiny bit upwards relative to the BBL. I think, or like to think because I bought an expensive lens, that I see the difference
Btw, I checked the tint with no lens as well and that is almost the same (duv 0.0002 lower) as with the sapphire lens (or probably uncoated plain glass as well).
I hoped for a bigger change by getting rid of the AR-coated lens and dive a bit under the BBL with the hotspot tint, but the good thing about it is that the AR-coating of these Lumintop lenses prove pretty good in that they do not change tint much.
I just finished up this tritium tailcap today. My first attempt was the single slot that I ended up putting a fiber optic into. I like how this one turned out. Does anybody know who came up with the Predator tritium pattern? This was my first attempt at doing it.
I kept the tail-standing ability, felt that was important.
That’s pretty close to Bob_McBob’s results. The stock lens appears to make the tint about 30 to 70 Kelvin more blue and about 1.0 to 1.4 mduv more green.
Sapphire sounds nice, but I’m happy with just a plain uncoated piece of cheap glass.
Just for the sake of putting it out there, be aware that while sapphire is very scratch-resistant it is less shatter resistant than some other types of glass and crystal so treat your newly crystal-blinged FW3A with care.
I replaced the stock frosted optics with the clear triple optic from my malfunctioned Wuben TO46R. It was purely random as I was just comparing the TO10R’s tint with my FW3A 3D’s tint. The Wuben’s (both 10R and 46R) neutral white is still slightly colder (with greenish tint) than the FW3A’s XPL HI’s 3D.
My Wuben TO46R had a easily removable tailcap for battery swap but its head is glued shut. The Wuben TO10R was the opposite with the head loose and the tailcap glued shut. Simple twist of the stainless steel retaining ring of the 46R’s head and out came the lens (AR coated) and the clear optic. I placed both lens and optics face to face with the FW3A’s and wholla… exactly the same diameter. The optics were exactly the same height for both and the lens appears to be the same thickness too. Sorry no actual caliper measurements (I’ll do that eventually later)….
Proceeded with the optics only swap so now I my FW3A XP-L HI 3D has a clear optic for what should be slightly more throw but slightly more artifacts (only on white wall). That’s all folks.
I kept my second FW3A with the 7A WW as is. No mods on that one.
Trits can take a lot of heat, don’t worry about that.
I often burn trits out of UV glue with a jet flame lighter.
That my shorten their lifespan slightly but I haven’t noticed any ill effects.
Every vial in the Mokume Lan was blowtorched out of something else
I wonder if it is an actual lens (as in: magnifying), or convex shaped sapphire with the same thickness over the entire surface (these are meant for watches).
In the latter case it does nothing with the beam.