Editing The Pen Addict 138/transcript (section)

== Flashlights ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's, it's pretty nuts. Um, Tony, I'm going to get you out on one last topic and. And, you know, I hope I didn't throw some grief your way the, the other couple of weeks. I didn't mean to sick my readers and listeners on you, but it was kind of funny at the same time. Um, because we're, we're actually on the same page and a lot of things. And I love how you wrote this article, but there's an item that you wrote about called the cool fall spy double Oh seven. And are we calling this a flashlight? Do they call it a flashlight? What let's, let's talk about this product and give us the background on this light and then blow our minds, um, about what it is and what it does and what it costs.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Okay. So the guy that, that designed this flashlight, he's a guy named Dave and all the flashlight. He's a guy named Dave, guy named Dave, guy named Dave, who hung out on a forum called candle power forums and candle power forums is for flashlights. What fountain pen network is for fountain pen. Right. And what happens in these places is that there's this sort of arms race to make like the most outlandishly awesome thing ever. So there'll be like a, a special edition pen with, you know, a rhodium nib or something crazy. And then that, that same thing happens in flashlights. And so what, what had happened was this guy, there were a couple of makers that made really good flashlights and a guy named Don McLeish, who goes under the name of McGizmo. He sells really high end flashlights and a bunch of people. And you're like, Don would, Don would put out a message on his message board on the forum saying, you know, I'm going to release a new wave of flashlights. And they would sell out in like, you know, 20 minutes and he would sell out, you know, 50, $500 flashlights in 20 minutes. Boom.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Are people just buying because it's his name? Like, you know, they will just buy it because they know it's going to be awesome.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Yes. Oh yeah. They would buy them because they're, and then, you know, like his lights can do things at other lights. Like he does a lot of diving, like underwater diving and his lights can are really good underwater because they're all titanium and he double seals them and he pots the electrics, which means he like mounts the circuit board and the emitter. Electrics electronics in, in a glue or resin. So he would sell those things out really fast. And it became clear after about three years of him doing his thing, that there was room for more, that there were people out there that were willing to pay more than $500 for a light. And so this guy, Dave is one of, probably one of the greatest machinists I've ever seen. I mean, he can do things with a CNC machine that just blow your mind. And so what he did was he designed a light and he basically rethought the light from like ground up. Like he took every single part and said, how can I make this better? And like, one of the things that's really interesting about all of his lights is that instead of having it be like a tube, it kind of looks like a Zippo. And at the top of the Zippo, there's a big cylinder and a little cylinder. And the big cylinder is the emitter head. And the little cylinder is a knob that you use to turn it. And the only way to describe the knob is if you've ever used a crown on like a Rolex or like a Breitling. And it's really, really smooth. And you can feel the detent, but it's not like snappy or locking you in. And that's the kind of feel that you get on one of these rotary knobs that turns on the light on a cool fall light. So he produced this light called the Spy 005. And it was clear that he was going to make another one. And the 005 originally was released in an aluminum body. And then he sort of went back to the drawing board once he saw that there was demand and people bought the 005. And he said, I'm making the 007. This is it. This is the one I want to make. And he spent about 18 months prototyping this light. And this light is an incredible piece of electronics. It's an incredible piece of machining. You know, like it's the body of the light. Everything except for the head and the rotor is one piece of solid titanium. And he sculpts it out inside and outside. So the battery tube is integrated into the light. It's all one piece. And then there's a cover. And the cover even is innovative. It attaches and it has a double O-ring seal. And it has these two standoffs that you sort of drop down. And then once it gets to a certain point, it sucks in. And then you have like a little final snap and snaps into place. And it's really locked in there. And, you know, this light is crazy. It can reprogram itself. I mean, the manual is on CPF. And it was like a user-generated wiki type manual. And people are finding things on this light that you can do that are just crazy. I mean, you can – it has eight output modes. And you can go, you know, super, super high. And you can have, you know, output with the new emitter that is basically the brightness of a car headlight. And you can go super, super low. You can set the light to be, you know, as bright as a match so you can preserve your night vision. And you can set it anywhere in between. You can even do, you know, totally different things. Like instead of having eight output modes, you could have one output mode. Instead of having, you know, it come on, you could have it come on as a strobe. You could do all different kinds of things. And then he made a bunch of accessories. He made like a little carabiner. It's like a – it's really crazy. It's like a $200 carabiner. Then he machined this chain-linked titanium. Like it looks like one of those chains for like a pocket watch. And that's compatible with the light. And then the last thing that he made that was an accessory was called the Dragonfire Nozzle. And what it is is it's an aspheric lens that you put over the emitter head. And it has a platform on it. And the lens focuses the light to a point where it's capable of lighting things on fire. So if you needed to have like a fire starter on your flashlight, you buy the – That.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What? Whoa.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' No way. Yeah, it's really cool. And you can see it. He has a YouTube video where he lights paper and then lights fabric. So it's an incredible piece of machining. And I mean like the optics that are necessary to do this are just off the charts complicated. And it's all this – it all fits in your coin pocket on your jeans. So it's really incredible. But the problem is the 007 is $1,300. So it's a ludicrous expense. It's not a rational expenditure. But I think if you have – if you're as bad a flashaholic as I am, then you have no choice but to buy one and at least try it. And I got a really good deal on it so I don't feel terribly guilty. But it's an incredible – and it's an incredible thing to have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this thing is – it's computer programmable, right? Here's the spotlight. I found this YouTube video.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Several of the prototype pieces of the dragon. I'm trying to see it. I'm trying to find this now. If you're able to take the platform off. You're going to light stuff on fire. It's like a – I'll put this video in the show notes. But it's like a – looks like a stove thing. Yeah. All my word and now it's on fire.

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' It's so crazy awesome. It's so crazy awesome. Like really, everybody out there that does EDC, what they want, what we all want is we all want a lightsaber because it both illuminates things and cuts things. And this 5007 is as close as you get.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, $1,300 for a lightsaber makes it sound cheap then, doesn't it?

'''Anthony Sculimbrene:''' Right, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah. That review was awesome. I think I read it at least two or three times. I just kept reading it over and over because it was so fascinating. It was really in-depth. And I couldn't – actually because I didn't know that anything like this was possible, right? I mean this is way, way out of my wheelhouse. And like this actually exists. And someone is sitting there making this. And it's – like you said, it's a guy named Dave. And he's coming up with this stuff. And, you know, we see some of that in the pen world too with, you know, guys making custom pens and doing great things and having, you know, killer filling systems. And kind of really pushing the envelope to what, you know, some of these mainline retailers don't. And that's what's fun about this, right? Being able to play around with this cool fall spy 007 or, you know, me playing around with an Edison Menlo, you know, pump filler. That's just, you know, things like that are just really, really cool. So I'm glad you wrote that review. And I hope I didn't send too much grief your way. Oh, there was some grief. Once I sent out that link – yeah, once I sent that link out, everyone was like, oh, my God, you got to be kidding me. And I was like, yeah, it's pretty funny. So, Tony, we're going to have to get you back on because we could – I mean I feel like we're just scratching the surface on all this. And, you know, I think we'll wrap it up for today. But I imagine, you know, as much feedback as we got last week, I think we're going to hear it this week because you were awesome on the show. And we really, really appreciate you taking the time to come on today.