I'm back again with the part that I rejected when I was making Dales Solarforce M8 copper pill. I had just received a Convoy C8 in the mail from Mountain Electronics and figured what the heck. Lets see how it fits. Lo and behold! It fits nicely! I really liked Dales M8 and started thinking that maybe I could cobble two C8's together to make a poor man's M8 for myself.
Pictures of what's done so far.
If you read the M8 Copper Pill thread, I machined the star pocket too deep so I had to start all over and do a new one for Dale's M8. So this one needed the height problem to be rectified. I machined a piece of copper and heated the pill in the oven. It took a long time to heat up. I ended up cheating and using a torch to get it hot enough to take 96/4 silver solder.
Machining the fins down to match the C8 head.
Drilling the solder out of the wire holes
Here we have all of the parts needed. The head is in a split ring so it isn't marred in the three jaw chuck. The copper ring goes on the shoulder that I machined on the head. And of course the pill screws into the head.
Putting it together...
The surface of the pill is exactly at the inside shoulder height like the original aluminum pill was. I know that I've mentioned that height gauges are great before but it bears repeating. Having a height gauge allowed me to get the height dead nuts right on where it needs to be.
I should have probably cleaned it up more before taking pics, but what the heck. It's a working class light.
I made the mistake of showing Dale a preview. Of course he wants it. He even shrewdly sent me a replacement C8. Once again, I'll be mailing a package to Texas.
Holy cow, keep this up and I’m gonna have a religious herd of flashlights! That’s awesome! Very ingenious with the collar, didn’t see that coming at all! Man that’s a beaut!
It’s big brother is kicking some serious A$$, just got it running and it’s making 6.77A putting out 3226 OTF lumens at 30 seconds! Oh yeah, Buck does some amazing work!
I honestly can’t believe your’e parting with that one. Love it that you are, but can’t believe it. We’ll get it in the Trifecta as a SuperMod, see how the numbers and all add up against a pretty dang decent internal copper pill. Not much out there going to compete with the aesthetics of your lights, for sure!!!
Dale’s behavior in this regard is oddly reminiscent of Scaru’s behavior towards OL mods. Up all night posting “I want that” before anyone else has even seen it. I don’t know whether to praise him for supporting such fine work or castigate him for leaving the rest if us out in the cold. Nice recovery. That’s a sweet piece of everyman.
Scott, don’t think I haven’t been thinking about that, because I have. It wasn’t like that though, as we had discussed what he was going to do with the scrapped pill before he figured out what to do with it. In talking about it, I, of course, thought it was an excellent idea and figured he’d be keeping it for himself, making the extension like he said and having a monster light of his own. Didn’t figure he’d part with it. And am willing to step down if indeed he want’s to keep it or do otherwise. I’ll test it for the Cree Trifecta to get a comparison to the other lights, the SuperMod style, and send it back to Buck.
Seriously Buck, keep the C8 I sent as a token of my appreciation for the sheer dedication you’ve shown in making my M8 pill. It’s awesome, I love it, and thank you keenly for the experience.
If’n Buck decides to go ahead and sell it to me, well, SOMEBODY’s gotta have it!
The main reason that I'm parting with it is that Dale's unbounded enthusiasm made it impossible to say no. Also, I'm eager to see what it can do when pushed to the max and his latest camparo thread is just the place to put the results.
Some time in the future I might do one of these in aluminum with the same dimensions. I've decided to try my hand at anodizing. If I ever get that figured out I may make a few and sell them that way. I could even do a copper/aluminum hybrid for those that want to reflow the star directly to the pill. Machining those grooves in copper (twice) wore me out so I won't be doing that again for a while.
My appologies to both of you. I was just twisting your tails a bit since the light was gone before it was here. I value the contributions of both of you highly since we need people of high enthusiasm to occupy those with high talent. Don’t change a bit.
Droolworthy, it is! And hefty in a bigger light, I can only imagine how solid it feels in the C8!
Seems to me it’s screaming for an MT-G2, but a hard hitting XM-L2 might also do well in there. The right tint, de-domed, driven hard (6A?) smooth reflector, might just be a force to be reckoned with.
So, do you keep something like this polished? Or let it age naturally and blend with the black body?
Wow, beautiful. I had this exact same idea, because I also just received a Convoy C8 in the mail from Mountain Electronics. I was wondering what it would take and how it would look, and you have executed it beautifully, and it looks fantastic. I can’t wait until I get a small lathe!
Oh yeah, Buck does some amazing work!