My method for opening that worked on 2x S41 and the S41S.
Initially you need to crack the glue… I used a vise with rubber jaws to compress the head slightly on the sides. Rotate about 15* tighten vise, squeeze again. I continued past the half rotation point, until I finally felt some slight movement in the bezel trying to un-thread it. I barely had any movement but continually trying to tighten and loosen, I was finally able to thread the bezel off.
While cracking the glue, it will not release off just one side of threads. Some will still stick to the head and some to the bezel. Now you need to work the threads, tightening and loosening to get the glue to break apart further. Once I finally got the bezel off the glue was pretty much dust. Hardly anything remained on the threads of bezel or head.
There is not much room for error while squeezing the head. Glass lens does not have much room. Copper head threads about 2/3 of the way into bezel height. I had the bezel protruding above the vise jaws about 4mm while squeezing it. Glue is really hard, possibly acrylic of sorts.
Here’s my method for unscrewing the glued bezel ring.
I did get the head to unscrew using two pieces of 3/4 inch (19mm) thick soft pine with 1 and 1/16 inch (27mm) holes through the center with a thin saw cut through part of the middle from one end to allow compression in a vice and clamps. Compressing the wood separately for each piece allowed enough grip and leverage to loosen the bezel ring with no damage or personal injury. I did this while one or two remaining emitters would still go into turbo resulting in a hot bezel that probably softened the adhesive some.
Wow! Keepitsharp - that's one of the best setups I've seen. I dunno for sure, but don't think I've ever seen that setup before on BLF, but it makes a lot of sense and should pretty much guarantee no scratches, etc.
Hhmmmm. Worth investigating whether I can do it - don't have a good setup for wood working now, but I got a few lights needing unbinding.
Thanks Tom E. This method has helped me a number of times over the years.
I recall a couple of instances, not flashlights, that were MUCH harder to crack than this S41S head.
YES! I just got mine open! A few scratches but that doesn’t bother me. My method was three layers of bicycle tube bands to protect the two parts from a vice (copper) and vice grips (bezel). I just kept slowing winding up the tension on both until the glue gave in. Time for some shopping.
I recall someone suggesting a small piece of wood with 2 nails driven straight through. The nails can then be bent to accommodate different sizes of retaining rings. This is probably the cheapest tool, especially if you already have the parts, and more durable than tweezers or ring pliers.
for the retaining rings you don’t necessarily need to span both holes.
I just use a starter punch with a semi-pointy tip to stick into one hole and push the ring counter clockwise.
If a light has tiny holes an awl works.
Some will say a retaining ring pliers is the tool. But you need fixed tips and will need various sizes. Tiny holes are a problem with these.
Also when tightening back up with a single tip, go to both holes to make sure it is tight before calling it good.
Needle nose pliers in small to large sizes. You can buy’em cheap and file or grind the ends down for the really small holes or you can drill the holes in the retainer bigger, Get you a wire size drill index if you can afford it, or just buy singe wire size drills what ever you can afford. I get them out and drill thru and bigger any ways!
Thanks a lot for the suggestions. Living in a small country town and not having access to a hardware store close by, I’ll give the nails & wood option a try 1st. Plenty of plan B’s here too if that doesn’t work.
On my S41S head I did not manage to get the driver retaining ring out. The brass and the copper did very nasty things with each other (I believe it is called galling) and in the end I gave up, screwed the ring back in (which was even a tour de force at that point) and just used the stock driver (which was fine anyway).
Perhaps someone here who also owns the BLF A6 can confirm this for me -> I recall reading a post which mentioned that the body + tailcap from a BLF A6 lego’d to the S41S head. Is this true? thanks!
