Black 3.0 is supposed to be perfectly matte. Seems like that ought to remove the artifacts caused by shiny stainless steel bezels. Can anyone think of any reason why this wouldn’t work? The idea would be just to paint the inner surface.
I thought of a pitfall on my own. The temperatures of high-performance lights might degrade the paint. Probably would, in fact. Darn! I thought that would look so slick.
It should work. People have been doing it.
But it’s probably overkill, regular black matte paint goes a long way.
Also, you may paint the sides of the lens. It causes rings too. And the LED centering ring. And the non-emitting part of the LED itself. And do you have wires covered?…and so on. 
Example light with a lot of blackening:
Haha point taken. 
It is a slippery slope.
I can’t see those hosted images at the moment but I will look later. Thanks!
That’s not actually what I meant….yes it is, but it actually gives tangible improvements. I think if clean beam is a high priority for you, it makes sense to go quite a long way down this slope. How long? Hard to tell, you have to try and see. If it’s not a priority for you - it doesn’t make much sense naturally but if that was the case you wouldn’t ask this question.
Ah I see. You were saying, “Why stop there?”
I guess we’ll see. I tolerate flower/clover beam patterns in some lights but imperfections bother me more in single-emitter beams. This whole idea was spurred by a Convoy M21G beamshot I saw which showcased a very bright secondary ring from the stainless bezel.
Wouldn’t lumen output be reduced by painting the areas near the emitter? I guess that’s a tradeoff to consider. I never thought about the edge of the lens.
Whatever you blacken you reduce lumen. But almost all of these lumens just distract you. Very few eventually reach the spot you look at or the LED die (where they have a chance of being absorbed and re-emitted). But the distraction matters more. By removing these distractions you will see better. How much better? Depends on how distracting it is for you. Even if not at all, the light reflected off stuff close by disturbs your night vision, so there is some effect. But not very large.
The sad news is: the more you think about it the more you see it.
Anytime I need to repair a scratch in black anodized aluminum, I use Birchwood Case Aluminum Black
Just make sure you follow the instructions and it works perfect everytime. You need to remove any oxidation from the exposed aluminum, degrease if there is any oils on it and apply immediately, I used a qtip. When I built an AR in 458 SOCOM, I had to open up the ejection port for the larger shell casings. After using the Aluminum Black, you can’t even tell by looking at it close up.
Thanks for the recommendation. I will keep that in mind both for my lights and my AR. Btw, have you seen the new Ruger SFAR? A pretty interesting offering, I thought.
I’ve painted bezels on several occasions — sometimes it helps —- sometimes it doesn’t —— for stainless bezels regular paint won’t hold up — you have to bead blast them with aluminum oxide beads and use a Lacquer based paint (bake on works the best/ I got some from Brownelles ) — I’ve also had good results with Lens from Flashlightlens.com— If they have the right size you need
^ this is exactly it. I went down this rabbit hole with the Wurkkos Ts30S awhile ago here and made a post about it. Very nice light for the money btw, but the RINGS in the outer edge of the beam killed it for me. I removed the SS bezel, it helped. Painting the inner edge didnt do anything on that light. The GLASS - i never thought of that! That was probably a big reason for the beam rings, and it makes so much sense. BC on the ts30s the rings were coming from somehwere and that couldve definitely been it. That was one of my earlier endeavors in modding such things, and i have recently considered buying that light again and seeing if i could do better removing the beam artifacts.
Great topic OP :))
Another option is to try some diffusion film. There are a ton of types available ranging in “diffusiness.” They can help with rings and also tint shift.
Depending on what you use there will be some loss of output and throw so it’s a tradeoff for a nicer beam. I recommend buying from Boaz here (and get some minus green while you’re at it - great to have on hand).
@Artie Glad this topic is proving fruitful! :+1:
Thanks for the recommendation! I would probably reserve that solution for floodier lights personally. I do have at least one light that would benefit from it though. The tint shift in my Zebra sc700d is brutal…