Congrats ‘slow2go’!!
This is a prime example of the old saying…. “when you snooze you loose”. :-(( Me being the “snoozer & looser”. lol
I saw these about 00:45 this morning and by the time I got thru reading about them a couple of times [as well as a few other threads also ] I went back to get them and lo & behold… too late.
I was gonna get the same two you did too…… Blue & Gray.
Enjoy… lesson learned by me also.
Oh yeah, just so I’ll now for future reference [when I do get one… or two… off these] what type of 14500 battery do these take?
I don’t have any modded lights…. yet, and Protected Li-Ion’s[ 26650, 18650, 14500, & 10440] are pretty much all I use & am familiar with.
But I see by the amp draw these require… the “protected” 14500’s would not work. What would?
KY, I assume you still use the OL “human lathe” method for chopping these down? My preference is to chop them at the tail and use a alum or brass pressed in plug for the tail. I could possibly be persuaded in to turning up a small batch if you or anyone else that does minis might be interested.
I use the human lathe method because I much prefer the look of the knurling in the middle of the light rather than at the end. I do occasionally use tail plugs when someone requests “as short as possible” so I’ll give it some thought.
I like the knurling in the middle look as well but I use a brass sleeve to string the parts back together. It allows for more intermediate options with relative ease. Mag lights are great, with as many options as you can imagine. I’d like to work up a side switch module like those for the larger mags.
Actually Scott, that should be pretty doable, well, with a lathe. I think I’ll give it a go with this little black AA incan sitting here… pretty sure how to work it, I think I have a couple of momentary’s, this might be pretty neat!
Really making me want to try another go at a triple mini-mag. I tried twice and just completely ruined both tubes trying to cut and rethread. Just couldn’t seem to get it right.
The threads on MagLite’s are 4 way start. Without expensive tools you just can’t “rethread”.
This is a fast thread that literally is 4 spirals, each quarter turn brings up a new start point. Makes it nice for the user, a major pita for the modder. Unless the tube can have the top threads completely removed and the threads in the head bored out for a fresh start, cutting new threads is not an easy option.
This is why we normally cut and re-join with a male/female connection. Not the best, but by far the easiest considering.
He may have been referring to the tail cap threading. OL did a gb before there were GB’s on the tap for that a few years ago. The key to rethreading is one, start with the correct id and two, stay on axis. And lube.
Yeah Scott, I know, but without doing something on both ends you end up with the knurling disappearing into the head with no smooth stretch. I like to see knurling between smooth areas like the stock configuration but it isn’t easy to make that happen. Double cuts, double fitments with the male/female press fit.
Chicago X used to flip the tube, chop it from the other end and re-thread it to make it work out right. This on the larger D and C sized lights, no press fit section this way and it had a nice look to it. Wish I’d gotten one of those from him, he also fitted a clicky switch in the tail cap and eliminated the side switch to make a much shorter 1D configuration. Looked awesome!
Devil’s in the details, you know it, Justin knows it, pretty sure kyfishguy knows it by now as well.
I’m wondering how these lights have the pill made, are there any shots showing this? I got my first chopped MiniMags from TexasLumens and built them up the human lathe way, several triples done that way and I’m wondering if these are done in a similar fashion. (cutting an aluminum or copper spacer/light engine) It can be illuminating to see how someone else goes about doing something sometimes.
I definitely tune in to see how others do it since in the end what interests me is the variety. My way works for me but that doesn’t make it better. Thanks for sharing yours KFG.
I was thinking along the same lines Scott, one way is not necessarily the right way, just a different way of achieving a similar result.
I do mine differently, but whatever. Mostly it’s because we each come from a different background, have a different skill set, different tools, so we go about a thing as it suits us, a way we find easy due to familiarity and possibly a lack of knowledge in a different aspect. In the end, they all work, marginal differences in output, everyone’s happy.
Really, I haven’t even done all mine exactly the same way, I use what I have at the time and what behooves me sometimes takes a different turn. lol
I knew a bloke once that did the same job twenty times though he used a different approach every time to do the same thing. The end result was that they all worked correctly. Who says long term dope use doesn’t affect you. :-/
] I went back to get them and lo & behold… too late.
That’s on my TRUE micro mag, a 14250 cell. (Macro micro?)