[Pax Jordana]

I have a 4D maglite that has been through a few trips out, and mainly does home duty right now because frankly it's too heavy to carry around and those LEDs *do* last forever....


Anyway tonight I was using it as a hammer. Not smart. The batteries survived, but I busted the spare in the tailcap. Normally no big deal but I DID get a bunch of lightbulb glass all over my socks and the carpet.

Has anybody else had this problem? Is there perhaps something I'm missing that would be handy to keep a tailcap spare safe through light bashing (besides cessation of said bashing?)

2AA maglites come with plastic sleeves for their lights. I guess I'd be looking for something like that.

[sm]

4 Cell had a foam "sleeve" - I say "had" because the dog took off with it - when I dropped it.

I just cut another piece of foam to resemble factory set up.

Another 3 D cell light we lost the foam - we used one of them Styrofoam packing "peanuts" and scrunched it in there.

These have been dropped, banged , dropped kicked and the bulbs have held up.

Knees, big toes and door facings did not fair as well...

Tough lights! I like and still use the old standard bulb set ups.

[hso]

PJ,

Pal, it's a flashlight and not a hammer. Al not steel. You use it that way and sumth'n is gonna bust. The spare lamp is the most obvious, but you could ding the tail up enough to keep if from screwing off or making contact with the batteries. You could put the spare lamp in a foam cushion to keep it from getting broken, but you still risk breaking the filament in the lamp. As an alternate approach, you could go with an LED conversion and not worry about it.

[Pax Jordana]

yah HSO I know, its main use is to light things up, but it proved handy as an 'emergency hammer' if you catch my drift.. I was just hoping somebody'd found a way around the few shortcomings it has in that role :)

[hso]

I was just hoping somebody'd found a way around the few shortcomings it has in that role

Got several, but the only way to keep from busting a filament lamp I've found is to replace it with an LED. There are lots of aftermarket conversions available and even Maglight is making LED versions of many of their lights.