Cheap Homemade LED Torch (full Build)

A cheap source of LEDs
A full torch / flashlight

Step 1: LEDs

I found a pack of six gas-lighters with built-in LED lights for a pound.

Dismantling these was fairly easy, as shown in the pictures, it's not too dissimilar to 'breaking'

If you've got LEDs already, skip this.

Step 2: LED Assembly

Wire all of the LEDs together.

I've pushed the +ve electrodes through a small piece of insulation, cut from some heavy mains cable, like an elastic band this holds the electrodes together.
Also looped around the electrodes is a bit of thick copper wire.
The (yellow) insulation holds the electrodes in place while solder is applied, joining them to the copper wire.
A quick bit of soldering and you're done.

Next wire all the -ve electrodes together (see pictures). I've used individual copper strands from mains-cable, soldered and twisted.
Take a strand of copper (extracted e.g. from some mains-cable), tin it, tin the LED electrode and solder.
When you've done all six, twist them together, around the the outside of the central electrodes, to form a single -ve

Spend a bit of time getting the LEDs correctly aligned here. You can tweak and nudge the LEDs so that they form a nice alignment pointing in the same direction, but it takes a bit of time. Once you've got this to your satisfaction, it's time to move on to the next step

Step 3: Casting the Head

I'm encasing the unit in resin, using a handy mould I found.

Holes were drilled for the electrical connections, and I tried to seal up with Blu-tack (worked OK, but did leak a bit).

Regular resin for glass-fibre was poured in, and left to set.
The mould was cut away, but I could probably have forced it out.

Last (on this step) I've soldered a switch onto one wire, and a battery-contact onto the other. Both of these came from another horribly-cheap LED torch, which never worked (freebie)

Please see pictures, they are annotated

Step 4: The Rest

Roll a tube from paper around some AA cells.
I've coated this with resin, but tape would be just fine.

For the other battery contact I've got some wire through a plastic disc, screwed it up a bit and added a big blob of solder (this worked very well). The other end of this wire is soldered onto the switch.

Finally the tube is glued into place with some epoxy.

Step 5: End

Cut two slots in the end of the tube to retain the battery with a clip. Form the clip from e.g. a paper-clip, or other piece of stiff-ish wire. This has to be in just the right place, so take your time in getting it right. I can't think of the name for this type of clip (sorry)

Wrap the wire around the shaft, and finish with Gaffer-tape. It's not pretty.

So I took the tape off and improved the look of this, see next step.

Either 2 or 3 AA cells, will power this, slid down the tube (obviously). When using 2 I've had to improvise a dummy cell with card and foil.

L

Step 6: Finished Torch

Gaffer tape removed.
Most of the insulation was removed from the wire and the strands re-wrapped.
A bit more resin was added to the rear-end, with the clip-slots filled (temporarily) with card wrapped in PTFE tape. The open end was blocked with a piece of Blu-tac, wrapped in it's own waxy paper. The switch was masked with Blu-tac, and the LEDs masked with Blu-tac wrapped in plastic-bag
Sprayed with metallic paint, this looks much better