Tailcap magnet so strong it pulled all the gold plate off my phosphor-bronze spring!

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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Damn Wurkkos puts strong magnets in their tailcaps these days. Darn thing straight pulled the gold plate right off my phosphor bronze spring! I didn’t even know gold was magnetic. And now the whole phosphor bronze spring is magnetic too!
Boring Imgur link to picture of not-gold-plated not-phosphor-bronze spring

Sorry sarcasm over. So what actually are these springs made of?

Was a bunch of flakes of metal stuck to the magnet inside my tailcap on the TS25. Took the spring out and realized that’s the gold plating.
I always knew the spring was magnetic, and I know there’s magnetic alloys of bronze, but afaik phosphor bronze is not one of them, but w/e. At least it appears to be some kind of copper alloy.

But whats with this magnetic gold plate? Needed an air compressor to get it off the magnet it was stuck so good. I mean I knew it wasn’t gold, maybe some copper alloy, but its more magnetic than even the springs are. After I blasted them off the tailcap magnet I found the flakes using another magnet to suck em right up like a vacuum. You think it’d be an improvement to just remove the rest of this fake gold plating? Or just bypass the spring? This light pulls >20amps on turbo and thermal regulation stepping in after 20 seconds is unacceptable. Gotta get that down to 15 seconds at least.

Btw has anybody tried just making their own springs? Ive done it with galvanized steel wire for other stuff. You can buy lengths of beryllium copper wire. How hard is it to work? Or is it just too toxic? Is there something better? I know you can buy individual springs but it’d be easier to just buy the wire so I can make any size.

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It’s not generally easier to make something than to buy it.

Three readily available options are: the two “”Blue springs”:https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/56987” and the intl-outdoor BeCu spring. There are also the BeCu battery springs from Lee spring but they are expensive and not very forceful. Beyond those options various places sell phosphor bronze springs, like KaiDomain.

BeCu wire is available in different alloys and in different states of heat treatment. Heat treatable wire requires heat treatment and plating in order to make the spring a spring. There is also pre-plated, age hardened and tempered material that can be readily shaped into a spring. A final stress relief process may optionally be performed.

Solid Becu is not hazardous to touch or handle. It’s grinding dust and particulate that you do not want to breath to any extent.

Another option, which I am surprised to not see more of, is to use any spring along with a gold plated contact button, and do a wire bypass up to the button. With this option you get the best spring availability, the low resistance of a bypass, and a gold plated contact rather than the sub-optimal solder blob contact which usually accompanies a bypass.

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That looks like a steel spring with a coating of copper followed by a flash of gold.

Take some fine sandpaper or a file and feather thru the layers on the bottom to see the layers revealed.