A Scratch Build For Fun! Picture Heavy! FINISHED!

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
21

Well, I could rant for about an hour... but I won't! I know folks that have had good service from Grizzly...perhaps I'm just hard to live with. I'll admit, when it comes to machinery I'm a little some could be Awe heck, the truth is I'm a bear about a machine! But... PRECISION machines should be treated as such. Grizzly didn't do this in at least my case! I have purchased other items from them since and they have been good... but I have YET to as a question of all but one guy there and get a correct answer. They SELL decent machines but I don't think they know beans about them. Well, that was almost an hour!

Dan.

22

TexasLumens good looking job there.
In pic 4 and 6 with the threading. Do you thread into the piece towards the chuck stopping at a relief?
I found it much easier to run the lathe in reverse and flip the threading tool to the other side of the piece.
That way your carriage feeds away from the piece towards the tailstock.
You just have to use a carriage stop set at where you want to start the threads. Run the cross slide in few thousandths to start the thread in the relief area. Wait for the right number on the threading dial and engage the carriage auto feed.
When it gets done disengage auto, run the cross slide back towards you a few thousandths making sure your past the piece , start back at the carriage stop run in a few more thousandths than last time. You know the drill. :wink:
Just wondered if you ever tried it this way. Nothing wrong with the way you are doing it, I just find it much easier you may find it harder.

23

Don’t really need to say more but will anyway. Damn glad you picked up the camera. Thanks for sharing your work.

24

It depends. If I'm fresh in the day I thread toward the chuck most of the time. If I'm tired and been at it awhile, I do the flip thing. As well, if the ID is small I ALWAYS run away from the chuck because you simply cannot see and I find marking the thread tool so you know where you are to be a little haphazard. I can usually get away with it but you have to be really careful. I don't like bumping anything!!! I like both ways and stay in practice as much as I can with both methods.

Dan.

25

I for one don’t know much about lathe and how they work, this thread is very informative to me. Great writeup and pics, texaslumens.

Thanks!

26

Doesn’t look like you need more practice. :slight_smile:
Great job on this thread with all the pics. Time consuming I know but well worth your effort for the rest of us. Keep up the good work TexasLumens. :wink:

27

my lathe is so old and ancient it doesn't even have a name, although I call it the angry rust monster

sadly no threading for me as it's a bit lacking in the features department. I can however pick it up myself and put it in the boot of my car, so there are some advantages to it :) First on the list of things to do is an on-off switch and a hold down for the motor as yanking the plug from the wall to stop it gets old pretty fast (as does physically holding the motor down while turning). I've had all of it bar the motor apart and it runs really nicely. After that, a vertical vise attachment for the cross slide so I can do some light milling :)

One day I'll be somewhere long enough and have the spare scratch to get a proper lathe, but this has already expanded massively the things I can do, so I'm pretty happy!

28

That’s it. I don’t care how much Whisky it’s going to cost me - my housemate is giving me Lathe lessons if he likes it or not!

29

That is a sweet lathe! Sometimes I love it when something is so simple that you can see everything that it is doing. It's probably more accurate than mine too, haha.

30

thanks! Couldn’t have wished for a better lathe to learn on - simple and small enough that it’s not going to kill me when I screw something up. I also have a thing for old tools, it’s fun imagining what they were used for over the years. Sadly the oldest provenance I have for this was that the tattoo artist of the friend of the friend that gave it to me used to use it to wind the coils on his ink guns around 10 years ago :slight_smile:

31

subscribed

(no lathe here , 2nd floor three-room apartment +girl +son)

32

Wow! I'd be forced to polish that rascal up and put it under glass!! Thats an oldie! I THINK... it is an old Craftsman or Atlas but I can't tell for sure. The chuck sure looks Craftsman. What a trophy!

Dan.

33

Well... Come on! I have room and NEED HELP! Ha! I can put you right to work. The reflector/ pill is a Solarforce that I bought somewhere. 5 Modes!!! I'm not too happy about that but it's nice. I can't decide if I want to use an 18650 or a 14500 for power. According to calculations, the 14500 will run it on high for about 55 minutes. I almost didn't leave enough room for the 18650 in diameter. It will go but I think the light needs the extra metal in the tube so that it will balance nice in the hand. Just haven't decided. Sorry I didn't see your question the first time. ... You have tools!!! That light you made didn't grow out of stock all by itself!!! Many Thanks. Dan.

34

thanks, that's very kind. I kind of like the old patina though :) Here are some dirty lathe pics (not work safe)

just don't show them to your lathe or you'll be in trouble! (sorry for the threadjack BTW :))

35

OK... here is the ending of this little scratch build saga. Its so old now it has moss growing on it but I wanted to get it finished up. You can look at the OP and refresh where we left off.... Enjoy... I REALLY kept this as short as I could... no, REALLY!

I added a little blue tape to avoid all the scratches I could.... All dressed up for the prom here.

This is why I won't build lights using this method too often... This shows the jaw depth of my lathe chuck... It can easily swallow the head of a D sized Mag light but as always, there is a trade off... The smaller lights are harder because ... well... let the image below this one explain.

As I was saying... because of that jaw depth, if the part has detail or a head on it like this light, the smaller lights make you work really really close to the chuck!! Not all that hard but nerve racking.

I used one of the high tech tools to remove the tape from the work area....

Turned the part down the Major thread size and then put a bevel on the front outer edge... this makes the threads "Glide" together when they start resulting in a nice feel. After this the threads were cut and that ended the work on this main body part.

Time for the end cap.... Always starts the same... with a center drill to keep the actual drilling started straight.

Then the Drilling...

Now the cap... or soon to be cap is bored to exact "Minor" thread size ID with a boring bar. This keeps everything close tolerance, straight and smooth. The surface here actually becomes the outermost portion of the inside thread... confusing but thats how it is so smooth is important.

We'll jump ahead here... The cap now has the inside threads cut...

The threads fit, I cut the cap off the stock, added a slight bevel... and the light is already trained for tail standing!!

Time now to punch a center hole in the end of the cap for the switch cover.... CENTER DRILL AGAIN!

Again... as the tool reaches into the part... things get close.

Drill Again....

Time to work now on the end & finally outside the cap... We're getting closer! The boring bar here is adding a little decoration.

Decoration added to match the bezel on the front and the switch cover hole bored to size. ... I hope!

It fit.

Nice snug... tight fit for the switch cover and the decoration looks better without that ugly hole showing.

I added just a line or two to the cap with a pointed tool , did a little cleanup on the outer edge of the end and added a touch more bevel.... Hit it with a scrubbie and there it is.

Business end.... Waiting on 1 O ring!

The light is nicely balanced and feels good when you hold it.

This was a fun little project and I have enjoyed sharing the build. As I said once before, documenting this really makes me have added respect for what Old Lumens ad some of the others here do. It easily triples the build time on each part of the light. I hope every member here that wants to do this gets a chance one day. THIS will hook you for life. I build quite a few lights and yes, I get tired...but I still like scratch building and enjoy the challenge! Sorry this was so long! Dan.

36

Man that is a great looking flashlight. Have you ever tried anodizing?

37

that’s like porn

38

Awesome, awesome build. The amount of talent on this forum never ceases to amaze.

39

Thanks. I Anodize, Moly Resin or Cerakote everything normally. This one was just really an experiment so I'm not sure what will happen with it. Thanks again. Dan.

40

Awesome workmanship .