Maggie the Mag or Maggie May as I like to call her. Helping a well used Mag back to life. Photo Heavy - It's Done!

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age,
But that don't worry me none in my eyes you're everything.

Rusty Joe (Thank You), I got Maggie today and I just want to show a few shots of the before. This may be the most ad-lib thread I have done, so bear with me. By showing the before, I am not saying anything bad about Joe at all. Maggie was a working girl, kind of like a waitress or barmaid. It just means she had an honest life and an honest job, just like Joe.

I think Maggie was a little shocked when I took her out of the box. After all, she went North and ended up in the hands of a Yankee. It would make any Southern girl shudder a littleSurprised and the first thing she gets, is a tear down and a bath! Embarassed Well, it's all for the cause.

m1

m2

m3

I think I can say that Maggie will have the Ano stripped and she will be getting a new coating, yet to be determined.

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m5

It looks as though Maggie has some Acid Reflux going on here, but I think some Baking Soda and water will help calm down her insides.

Back when I had a real job (in manufacturing), I was known as Dr. J. If there was a problem, just call Dr. J and the problem was solved.

Well, this may just have Dr. J written all over it.

I will be cleaning all of the acid residue first, with Baking Soda and wire brushes. Then I can clean out the bore of the body with the brake hone. It looks like I need to use the dremel to cut a clean step back in the tail cap, for the spring seat and I will have to also try to cut out all of the damage in the bottom of the tail cap.

Then I will strip part or all of the light and go from there. I imagine the bezel will either end up being crenelated or at least flattened, to clear up the dings. The body may warrant some polished rings in the damaged areas. Most likely, the inside of the tail cap and inside the body will be coated with epoxy, once they are stripped, to seal them up.

I will probably mod Maggie into an LED, but it's not definite yet. I long to do "one more hotwire", just for old times sake. I will have to think on that. I already have bi-pin sockets........ Hmmmmmm.......

That's all for now, I will keep up with progress as it comes. (and I said I wasn't going to do any big mods in the hot part of the year!), well Maggie is a special case.

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Today I decided to do a little stripping on Maggie. Removing some of the Ano and some of the battery corrosion, or at least attempting to. I got out the commercial strength Greased Lightning and went to work. It took over an hour on some of the parts, but It did get them cleaned up.

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I only stripped part of the head and part of the tail end. When it's together, it looks fairly even as far as the same amount of bare metal at both ends. Once it's polished, it will look much better. I will do some cosmetic polished rings in a couple of places as well.

I am not going to remove all of the scars. Maggie has a history and I don't want to remove all of it.

I did not touch the knurling. I have something special to cover that with. I'm thinking Turk's Head there.

OH, I might even do a little dress up on the tailcap, with a Copper round inlaid into it. I have been thinking of using Copper, Brass, Sterling Silver and Cabochons for big buttons on tail cap switches this fall, so I might just experiment with fitting an insert in this one.

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EDIT: Added a couple more shots.

ma1

I did get a start on the body rings.

And.......

mark

If anyone is interested, when I have to mark something that is curved (like a Maglite head), I just hold a pencil to a ruler and turn the part, to make a line around it.

I am doing that, to be able to tape off a line on the tapered part of the head, to cut a ring around it. I have several layers of tape, with a thin area as the guide. I will attempt to use my files to cut a ring here. I haven't tried it on a tapered surface yet, so we will see.

tape

That's all for today - Tuesday, 7-10-12Smile

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Well, I have gotten a little bit done on this light and decided to post the changes as I go, here in this post. Kind of a before and after.

Here's a shot of the light after filing rings and doing a little polishing here and there.

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Here's a closer shot of the head. I went with just three crenelations on the bezel.

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Here's the tail section. I also did just 3 crenelations on the tail cap.

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Here's the copper insert in the tail cap. It's not fantastic, but I think it looks nice and it's different.

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In all these photos, you will notice dings, scratches and other marks. I said before I wasn't going to take out all of the signs that showed this was a work light and I didn't. Also, when I say polished, it would be better to say shiny, since I don't really polish. I consider that polished means no marks and a mirror finish, but I don't do that, I just make it shiny. I just tend to abuse the word polished.

I have done nothing with the knurled area yet, but it will probably just be painted. I have thought about paracord for a couple days and have decided against it. I just don't care for paracord wraps. All the lights I have seen with it on them just look odd to me.

That's all for now 7-12-12

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Not much got done tonight. I did work on the switch and heat sink.

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I decided to go with a new switch. I have a couple lying around, from when I do tail cap switches and I save the stock ones. I removed the tower here.

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This is the positive cap that fits in the switch. I have soldered a gold plated spring in it. I will explain in the next shot.

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I decided that I was tired of poor grounds and tired of a lot of wires, so I have decided to solder the driver to the spring. That way there's no wire, it'd direct. I will also use stock negative contact and when the driver is in place, I can cut the negative contact to length and bend it, so that I can solder it directly to the negative outer ring of the driver. That way I only have two wires for the LED and I will be using the stock ground.

I also started fitting the heat sink into the body.

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There's more to do, but it will fit tight in the body and I will use a hidden screw through the body, into the heat sink when the actual position is determined.

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I am going to play around with the stock reflector. I want to see how bad it will do, especially if I use Krylon on it. Time will tell. I also have a Maglite LED reflector and an Aluminum reflector if all else fails. With only 1.7A on high, the stock reflector isn't going to melt and I just want to see what I can do with it. I cut the cam off of it here.

I will put a glass lens in, but I will also polish the stock one and send it along too.

That's all for Friday the 13th.

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Saturday the 14th.

Here's a shot of the heat sink. Nothing special. I have 1-1/4" rod stock still, so I'm using it and making sleeves to fill the gap. When this one is in place, it's tight and it will have a screw put in, to hold it in the body.

mhs1

Then I got to thinking... As I already said, I want to play with the stock incan reflector, but I really want to be able to adjust the depth, by screwing the head up or down, to see what it will do with the beam. So... I decided to throw together a small pedestal.

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Now, that's not the star I will probably use, but it was lying around and I could see what it looked like.

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The copper pedestal is a 3/4" diameter copper round, with a 3/8" copper coupling on top and some of this inside,

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plus some solder, to tie it all together.

I think it will work for what I want to do, which is see how that stock reflector does, as I turn the head up and down.

I got the T5 emitter today, but it's on a 20mm star, so I will have to reflow it onto a 16mm star, that has been cut down to 14mm, so it fits the pedestal.

That's it for the week-end. The driver comes in next week and all of this will be buttoned up so we can see what it does.

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Finishing up with Maggie;

I received the driver from E1320 (Thank You), He used a 4X7135 driver and added one chip, so it would be around 1.7A but what impressed me the most was the detail. He put a spot of solder on both of the led solder points and also on the positive and negative on the underside of the board! Impressed with that!

Unfortunately I don't have a photo. I took the body to work last night and painted the knurled area with the Rustoleum Textured paint I have used before. It's the black, with copper flakes. I figured it would go well with the copper insert in the end cap.

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When I got home from work last night, I decided to finish the light. I soldered the driver positive, to the spring on the switch and soldered a wire from the cut off negative terminal of the switch, to the negative ring on the driver. Then I soldered two wires to + & - on the driver, to go up to the led. I used solid wire for the led wires. I am liking solid wire a lot more lately. As long as it's not where it will flex a lot, it's better than stranded, in my book. Easier to form, easier to solder and it should carry current with less resistance.

Anyhow, I put the switch in, with the led wires sticking out and slid the heat sink down, threading the wires thru it, while pressing it in place. Then I just snipped and soldered the led wires and it's done.

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It works! That's low mode.

I ended up doing the pedestal for the led, just to see what I would find, when moving the stock reflector up and down. It's just as I expected and just like I have seen with every reflector, when using a led. There is one spot where the reflector gives you a perfect beam and anywhere else in the up/down range, there's an imperfect beam, that I just don't care for. LEDs are not like incan bulbs. Focusing does not work. You get either a perfectly focused beam, or nothing. I also sprayed the reflector with Krylon. I don't like artifacts. I have learned that I can use a stock incan reflector, but I just am not impressed with it, so I will be going back to aluminum reflectors from CNQG.

So... the light is done and it's time to show those beam shots. I use a Canon S3IS and it was set to Manual, IOS200, Shutter 0.5 seconds, Aperture 2.7, White balance set to daylight. I had it on a tripod.

The first shots are inside the garage against a dirty tan/yellow wall. There are five modes to this driver, but I only managed four of them with the inside shots.

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Looks about like what I saw

in2

Looks about like what I saw

in3

Looks brighter than what I saw

in4

Looks much brighter than what I saw. See, here's the thing, cameras don't capture what the human eye sees, because the human eye will automatically adjust brightness, by opening and closing the iris. What the camera saw is with the shutter speed and aperture the same through all the shots. What I saw is because my iris opened and closed to adjust for the light, to help it see better on low and help it to see less on high. That is the problem with all of these beam shots. Keeping a standard setting, may very well show the amount of light that is there, but that is not the amount of light your eyes "perceive", because your eyes adjust to cut down the light, on purpose, to protect themselves, so you never see the actual amount of light! Don't contradict, I am right. LOL

The last shots are outside against the wall of the garage.

out1

Lowest setting on the driver. It looks darker than my eyes saw.

out2

Driver setting 2, looks about what I saw

out3

Driver setting 3, looks about what I saw

out4

Driver setting 4, looks brighter than what I saw

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Driver setting 5, looks brighter than what I saw. Much brighter especially in the hot spot.

out6

This one was on high and it looks much like what I saw.

That's all folks!!

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Looking forward to watching the transformation…

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I have no words right now. Just watching and waiting (yes, tearfully, but knowing she’s in good hands).

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Im certainly excited to se the transformation.

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Really looking fwd to seeing your work on this!

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First post has been updated 7-10-12

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Not likely from acid, anyway. If it was from leaking alkaline cells, then it was caused by a base, not an acid.

Once the corrosion is that advanced and has dried, there’s little reason to do anything other than wire brush it off. Baking soda won’t help. If caught early enough, leaks from alkaline cells may be neutralized with vinegar.

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Great work OL. The tailcap inlay will look great. :)

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Beautiful work, as usual! I can’t wait to see what else you have planned for that working girl.

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Very neat project. Reminds me a restoration I did on an old, abused bench vise - nothing like bringing something back from the dead :wink:

Will

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Thanks for the info,

That prompted me to go to Wikipedia and find this, which led me to this and while it would help an intelligent person, I didn't grasp a thing from it, but at least I went looking.

Baking soda might not have been effective, but it sure helped clean off the grunge without having to scrub like hell. Maybe it's because Potassium hydroxide tends to absorb the water and the water broke it up, not the Baking soda?

Anyhow, the Greased Lightning did a real good job of cleaning and the result was satisfactory to me.

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We tried to use mineral spirits a few times, as dad thought that would be best to clean her major “acid reflux” deposits. I guess we should have used baking soda instead, but looking back, it wouldn’t have mattered. So much - too much - damage was done too fast. We tried with and without chemicals, but I knew things would get bad after that, especially when she leaked acid out the reflector and acidy residue kept fogging the lens. Poor girl.

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Very interesting indeed !!!

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You know, that’s the odd thing. I didn’t find any corrosion up in the top of the light or anywhere around the switch. It was all in the tail cap and in the last 3 inches of the tail end of the body.

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The baking soda probably helped as a mild abrasive. Once the potassium hydroxide touched the aluminum tube of the flashlight, it would have reacted immediately and no longer due to the following reaction:

2Al(solid) + 6H2O + 2KOH —-> 2K[Al(OH)4] + 3H2 (gas)

Greased Lightning worked to remove the anodizing because it contains sodium hydroxide, another strong base. Many types of oven cleaners and drain cleaners would work also, as they generally contain sodium hydroxide or other highly basic chemical.

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So what can be used to “contain” Potassium hydroxide? Will it eat thru epoxy? How about plastic? Most plastic containers are chemical resistant. I use them for stripping the ano and I haven’t seen any reaction with the greased lightning.

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Wow. Talk about resurrecting the dead. Good luck with this. I know you do great work and I look forward to seeing what you end up with.

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Looking good, Justin!