Expeditionary Camping Light

Making a battery powered light for Camping or that next steampunk expedition to wherever.

For the lamp parts, I used 2 five dollar flashlights from Menards. I did 2 of them so that the electrical load would be 9 volts dc. Each light is powered by 3 batteries for a voltage of 4.5 vdc. I did 9 so that I could use 9v batteries wired in parallel for long lighting in between battery changes. you can do this in 4.5vdc, just use D cells for longer battery life... these lights use AA size in series.

These pipes will be the stem, it breaks down into 4 pieces for storage in the box. Just make sure that the pipes are at least one inch shorter than the length of the box you use.

I took an old cookie tin and cut one third of it off for the shade... the LED bars will be glued to the underside.

showing the LED bars wired in series.. that gives you the 9v load, and glued to the underside of the shade.. a hole is drilled on what was the bottom of the can and a copper male adaptor is screwed into the hole...this will slip onto the copper 90 at the top of the copper stem and lamp cord is threaded though it to the shade... the wiring is completed to the LEDs.

This is the box I used, second pic is a false bottom I made for the battery storage and also mounting the switch for the lamp. I used thin wood strips for the bottom to rest on and leaves room for the batteries. I used two stips on the top for the stem pieces and shade to rest on in storage.

I got two electrical pipe straps to help hold the stem in place along with a hole in the end of the false bottom for the wires... cut a slit in the copper pipe for the wire to exit without the stem resting on top of the wire and possibly cutting it. The light breaks down with the shade sliding off the stem (make sure you leave slack in the wire for room to pull it off without pulling on the connection to the LED bars). then pull each section apart to fold down and store in the box. Thats it. Hope this made sense, its my first try at an instructable. Any constructive critisism is welcome, in case I want to try this again.