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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Hanko Machine Works flashlights
- Thread starter Terry M.
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2004
- Messages
- 24,466
I'd only consider going the custom flashlight route if the light in particular is easily upgradeable. I can't speak to the Hankos in that regard, but I'd suspect that they are.
I did a bit of the custom/high end flashlight thing years back - McGizmo and a couple others. This was back when ~60+ lumens was considered the minimum baseline for an EDC and we were all amazed that a single CR123A flashlight could be that bright. The development/advancement of LEDs has seemed to have plateaued a bit, at least in terms of brightness/efficiency (more improvements being made with color rendition), but of course technology is still always improving.
These days I'd personally find it hard to justify spending buckets of money on a flashlight, given my past experiences, simply because of the obsolescence issues. This could and would only be mitigated if the light is easily upgradeable. Besides LED improvements, the drivers are constantly being improved as well. If the Hanko or whatever other custom light can take a replacement LED/"pill"/module without difficulty, then the light has much more value.
In other words, what you want to be purchasing is a "host" body for a pill module, or at least that's the way you should think of your purchase. Obviously you're also purchasing a flashlight, but the LEDs and pill are what will eventually go obsolete. It's also what can break/fry/die (switches too, but those are usually easily replaced). You don't want to spend $1000-2000 on what will eventually become a beautifully machined $1000-2000 paperweight. You want that host body to continue to be useful over the years, both in terms of durability/longevity and in technological advances.
Finally, you should also put serious consideration into the materials. If you don't have a much more inexpensive light of comparable size, you might want to pick something up like a Lumintop or Emmisar in lightweight aluminum, or Fenix, Nitecore, Acebeam, etc. Even in aluminum, a light of that size with a battery adds a chunk of somewhat ungainly weight to add to your EDC. Custom lights are available in aluminum as well, of course, but you can easily double that weight (or more) with something like titanium, electroless nickel, zirconium, copper, brass, etc. A custom zirconium flashlight might sound cool, but it's not much use if it's so much of a chunk that you leave it at home because it's too heavy.
I did a bit of the custom/high end flashlight thing years back - McGizmo and a couple others. This was back when ~60+ lumens was considered the minimum baseline for an EDC and we were all amazed that a single CR123A flashlight could be that bright. The development/advancement of LEDs has seemed to have plateaued a bit, at least in terms of brightness/efficiency (more improvements being made with color rendition), but of course technology is still always improving.
These days I'd personally find it hard to justify spending buckets of money on a flashlight, given my past experiences, simply because of the obsolescence issues. This could and would only be mitigated if the light is easily upgradeable. Besides LED improvements, the drivers are constantly being improved as well. If the Hanko or whatever other custom light can take a replacement LED/"pill"/module without difficulty, then the light has much more value.
In other words, what you want to be purchasing is a "host" body for a pill module, or at least that's the way you should think of your purchase. Obviously you're also purchasing a flashlight, but the LEDs and pill are what will eventually go obsolete. It's also what can break/fry/die (switches too, but those are usually easily replaced). You don't want to spend $1000-2000 on what will eventually become a beautifully machined $1000-2000 paperweight. You want that host body to continue to be useful over the years, both in terms of durability/longevity and in technological advances.
Finally, you should also put serious consideration into the materials. If you don't have a much more inexpensive light of comparable size, you might want to pick something up like a Lumintop or Emmisar in lightweight aluminum, or Fenix, Nitecore, Acebeam, etc. Even in aluminum, a light of that size with a battery adds a chunk of somewhat ungainly weight to add to your EDC. Custom lights are available in aluminum as well, of course, but you can easily double that weight (or more) with something like titanium, electroless nickel, zirconium, copper, brass, etc. A custom zirconium flashlight might sound cool, but it's not much use if it's so much of a chunk that you leave it at home because it's too heavy.