Once you stop and ask yourself what you’re doing, do you ever then find yourself going even further out of the way in the attempt to actually make it better? Come on now?! Gotta salvage all the work already done right? And save face? See, tol you I could! Braggin rights and all that, with only 17 hours spent on a 45 minute project.
Not that I would know anything about that at all.
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Took hours to make this tiny lil T6061 Reflector for this Ti light that’s the size of an SD card in your camera. Now I have no idea how to attach it! The light is 2 halves with magnets inserted so it split’s open with a thumbnail to change the button cell battery. How do I put this on without killing the opening ability?
Then, to add more hours labor to an already expensive little light, I decided the button needed to be replaced.
!!
So I found this Opal from Brazil, bored out the back for a pink Trit, and created a SS pad to epoxy it to so it’d stay in place. I admit, this one works and looks pretty cool, it even glows through a TShirt in the dark of night. Nice lil target smack in the middle of the chest.
You saved me! I just may not be as bad off as I thought I was!! Ha! This is like having a limp... You're always seeing someone that is worse... or better off, depending on which way you look at it. Some of us are just totally addicted to working with our hands!!
Sometimes I almost get well... then some other danged addicted fool... LIKE YOU!!!.... comes along and makes me think.... "Just how hard would it be to build a light out of some Brazilian Agate I have..." SO... You DIDN'T save me!!!
I was just told by the guy that’s making my custom Ti light that he see’s me getting my own lathe. Now don’t you know how dangerous I’d be then? Good thing my wife works in PACU!
Thanks guys. Your all on the money and given me a good laugh. 17 hours on a 45 min mod and the worst part is when its spent over along period of time like a week.
As DBCstm said above,
Once you stop and ask yourself what you're doing, do you ever then find yourself going even further out of the way in the attempt to actually make it better?
Sometimes BUT. Going further just to make it work when your idea did not work.
The biggest pain on the above light was the switch. I did not want to do any screw cutting to hold the switch in so I thought I would go along the lines of match and his clip. I cut a groove in the inner wall at the height that the switch would sit and then bent a piece of 1.6mm wire into a round ring. Placed all the parts in the body, slid the clip in, perfect all nice and snug. Put a battery in screwed the switch cap on, clicked the switch on, nothing. It turned out that when the spring pushed on the battery it pushed the switch of the clip not allowing the earth to work. Bugger. Do you think I could get this clip out. No. After hours of cursing I ended up Pushing the switch down as hard as I could with a small screwdriver contorting my tongue into my left earhole and putting some solder down a hole managing to get some solder between the clip and switch. Hasn't missed a beat since.
I was thinking of going to "C" rings for switch holders in tail pieces. ... I'll thread anything... don't much care what it is . BUT... I really dislike making those little thin threaded doughnuts for holding the switch still. They are just a pain. ... BUT... I keep making them! I tried a couple of the "C" rings and I just wasn't satisfied with the contact. As well, I could feel a little slack when I pushed on the switch...just not good for me. I need something I can tighten to feel secure!! For what you are doing it should be good!
If you didn't want that ring to come out... it would FALL out! Ha! You brought a lot of smiles sharing this.... as did DBCstm... It is a comfort knowing I am not the only one next to the loony bin!!! THANKS!! Dan.
Nice to know there’s company in the bin, perhaps you’ll be the one to get the only straight jacket and me and the Aussie’s can rig stuff to keep the nurses busy.
I’ll give y’all the sneak peek, the item pictured is common to most all of us, or would have been about a hundred years ago. According to my 85 year old Dad, they “used to do a lot of sorderin” and this is the Kerosene Torch used to keep the iron hot. Filled with Kerosene, the top mounted hand pump in back built up pressure to push the Kerosene fuel to the nozzle. At top center is where the iron was hung, with the tip in the v-groove out front to be held in the flame. They’d use multiple irons, wooden handles of course, and rotate them into the flame presented by this torch to keep the iron hot and keep “sorderin”.
What a trophy! Somewhere I have three of the old wooden handled soldering irons that were used with those. When I was a pup my grandfather used one of those all the time. I remember he made a sheetmetal and brass tool box and soldered it all together using one of these and those old soldering irons. I have seen him repair starters and ... (how old are you?) Magnetos with them to. I guess that is truly where the words "Soldering Iron" may came from. The things weigh 3 pound a piece!! Ha! Yep... reflow your LED with one of those. I'll bet you can!! They stayed hot for a long time if you were indoors.
Thanks for sharing. Dan.
Geeeze... that would make a cool light too!!! ... BUT DON'T YOU DARE!
That right there made it worth doing. That took 14 shots on a 5DMkII, macro rail, lights, camera, double tripods, lit with an EDC+ Triple Nichia 219 on med. Photo’s stacked and processed in CS5 for depth of field from the very narrow originals that macro produces.
I wouldn’t think of messing with it, didn’t even want to clean it so’s not to mess up it’s “authenticity”. I’m a very old 50. Too many miles in construction, starting at 12. Dad’s a hillbilly from VA, been around antiques forever. And oh the stories! lol
But think about it. Back in those days, that thing was like Gold! Man the work you could do with a Kerosene Torch keeping your irons hot! Perspective, isn’t it? From nothing, steps up to something, steps up to more, and look where we are today? Acting like we deserve it all! Acting like we’re OWED it all! When was the last time you hid the remote so someone would physically have to get up and change the channel? Cut the cable so there are only 3 channels to pick from? Picked up the phone and the neighbors were already on it. Any one of 8 or 10 that shared the line? People forget. Or some people do. Wanna go out in the snow and turn the hand crank on the front of the car, hope it starts quick? Without breaking your arm? LOL Would our forefathers be proud of us, or think “What a bunch of wusses!” Ah, where would we be without them?
Tricks of the trade I suppose. Not many would spend 60 shots at 21MP ea to get a single shot they liked, much less merge 10-20 of those into one for the effect. I use a macro lens for close-ups. The area of focus when in close like that is only about 1mm, everything in front and behind that “plane” is out of focus to lesser or greater degrees. So I mount the camera on a slider (macro rail) and use the linear screw to advance the camera .5-1mm per shot. Getting every detail of the subject in sharp focus in a series of shots. Then merge those shots together in Photoshop to use only the in-focus areas of each shot, making a single shot that has outstanding detail. Time consuming, yes. But there’s no way to do it better. Especially when the subject is small. The shot below is only 8 shots stacked up for the one. The calipers are German made, but date back to the 19teens or early 20’s…were my Uncles and he passed away some 55 years ago. The copper star is one I turned down from 20mm to 10mm for the little light we’ve discussed. If you’d like to click on this pic and open it up to it’s original size in Flickr, you might be amazed at the near microscopic detail in the machining on those old calipers! Give it a look, you’ll see why I do it that way!
Only abused old rusty Harley’s that have been pronounced deceased.
That may be true, but I don’t like manipulation other than for fixing. In the stack of images Photoshop crunches the in-focus areas and saves me hours of manual labor. Now there are a few instances that I like to create, but that’s usually only messing around, like this…
Your own custom copper board.
Don’t know if you’ve followed Nitro and his experience with SinkPAD, but notice the name change at the bottom of the board. Oops! My bad!
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I just may not be as bad off as I thought I was!! Ha! This is like having a limp... You're always seeing someone that is worse... or better off, depending on which way you look at it. Some of us are just totally addicted to working with our hands!!
Dan.
