I’ve always loved antiques, and retro tech. In most cases, given a choice between a vintage original and a modern equivalent, I’ll almost always go for the older version, except when it’s really not practical to do so. Older tech was designed to be long-lasting, robust, aesthetic, and repairable…so unlike most products and technology made today.

And this extends to flashlights, or electric torches.

When I was a child, every flashlight had a replaceable bulb. If it burned out, you unscrewed the lens housing, pulled or screwed-out the bulb, tossed it, and put in a new one.

Modern flashlights don’t have this option. If the light dies, you have to throw out the entire thing, because the LED is almost always hardwired into the flashlight body itself, instead of being a separate component.

This is really annoying, when you consider how expensive some modern flashlights can be. The idea that you’d just throw it out if one tiny component failed to work after spending all that money, sounds like some kind of criminal waste.

Flashlights from…not even that long ago…didn’t have this issue. If the bulb died, you bought a replacement and stuck it in after tossing the dead one. Some vintage flashlights even had special clasps inside the cap to the battery barrel, that held a backup bulb, just in case the one currently in use died when you weren’t within close reach of a box of spare bulbs.

The thing about these older flashlights is that because their construction was, for the most part, extremely simple, they’re very easy to repair, and even better – they’re even easier to retrofit, so that a vintage flashlight can use a modern LED bulb, which is brighter, and more energy-efficient. Retro styling with modern convenience – who doesn’t love that??

Vintage Eveready Flashlights

About a month ago, I purchased a vintage flashlight at my local flea-market. It was $5.00 because it didn’t work, and was simply the shell of the flashlight – it didn’t have any internal components! No working battery springs, no bulbs, no batteries…nothing. But I’d read about flashlight restoration and watched videos about it online, and I was curious to try it out for myself. Because of my eyesight, I’m a heavy user of flashlights in my daily life, and I wanted to see if the hype of flashlight retrofitting was worth it.

The flashlight I bought was a vintage / antique Eveready model from the 1950s. For those who don’t know – EVEREADY – today “ENERGIZER Group” – was the first manufacturer of flashlights! Invented in 1898, the first EVEREADY flashlights were sold a year later in 1899. The first ever commercially-available flashlights were sold to…the New York City Police Department! The NYPD! These early flashlights were made of pressed fireboard (basically reinforced cardboard) with brass collars for reinforcement, fish-eye lenses, a simple on-off switch, and a screw-on tail-cap. They took between 2-3 D-cell batteries, depending on their length.

Just on a visual level, the flashlight was really cool. It gives off really vintage “Famous Five” and “Adventures of Tintin” vibes. It’s exactly the kind of flashlight that Julian, Dick, George and Anne would take with them on their adventures with Timmy the dog! It’s the kind of thing that Tintin might carry when he’s on assignment with Captain Haddock!

These early flashlights were made of brass, or steel, and either left plain, or more often, painted black, or plated in nickel, or chrome. Originally, they were made in the USA, but in the 1950s, production moved overseas to Hong Kong.

Restoring the Flashlight

At their heart, flashlights are really simple machines – insert batteries, connect bulb, flip switch – LIGHT! The first step was to find a lightbulb to test the flashlight with. Unfortunately, because most flashlights these days use integrated LEDs, this was easier said than done. Nowhere locally sold individual bulbs, so they all had to be sourced online. The next step was to buy batteries. Old flashlights like these usually use D or C-cell batteries, even though AA and AAA batteries did exist at the time (and have both existed for over 100 years!). These days, you can buy AA-to-D battery adaptors, though. They’re cheap, so I bought a few of those to see how they worked.

The next step was replacing the battery spring. The spring on the flashlight was missing entirely. The great thing about this is that you don’t need a specific type of spring, and one spring is much like any other, provided it’s the right size. Any suitably-sized, sufficiently robust spring made from steel will do. And guess what? Replacement battery springs (usually for MAGlite type flashlights) are easily sourced online! They’re available in two sizes – C-cell and D-cell, depending on the batteries being used. I ended up buying both, because of the differing space-sizes inside the end-caps on the flashlight barrel, but the concept is the same. Get a spring that fills the space, compresses and holds the batteries in position, and ensures a stable connection. That’s it!

After this came the removal of rust and corrosion. Fortunately there wasn’t much (if any) in the way of rust, but the corrosion (from old, leaking batteries) was more substantial. Gentle sandpaper removed it, and got the contacts working again so that the flashlights would work properly.

The next step was getting the switche working again. After 70-odd years, the switch was REALLY stiff, and clogged with dust and gunk. A couple of drops of sewing machine oil got it sliding back and forth properly, and a needle cleared out all the gunk inside that was jamming the on-off function.

The final step was to find out whether the flashlight even worked. Finding a spare lightbulb to test the flashlight while I waited for the LEDs to arrive was a real challenge. In the end I had to get a cheap, broken flashlight from a thrift-shop and use that. The bulb fit in perfectly (the great thing about stuff like this is that batteries, and bulbs, haven’t changed much in 100 years!) and this allowed me to test the flashlight.

The first thing that struck me was how yellow the light was. It was more akin to lamplight than an electrical bulb. It was the kind of light I remember from the rechargeable torches I used as a child. The other thing that was immediately obvious was how dull and dim the light was. It would light up a pitch-black room well enough, but in any space with half-light, a bulb of this power would quickly be drowned out by any ambient lighting around it.

Fitting the LEDs

The final step was of course, to get the LEDs. These had to be purchased online. Using the old bulb as a guide, E10 LEDs were the way to go – E is for Edison Screw, 10 is the size – 10mm. Once they arrived, it was simply a matter of removing the old bulb, putting in fresh batteries, and screwing in the new LED. And the difference was immediately obvious!

One characteristic of old bulbs is the dark spot in the middle of the beam, caused by the shadow of the filament. Since LEDs don’t have a filament, the beam is a lot more consistent and clear, which produces a brighter light overall. The beam is also a clear, bright white, instead of yellow.

Of course, even with a new and better bulb, this is still a 70+ year-old flashlight. It’s never going to look as good as a modern high-powered model that can double as a lighthouse – it’s limited by the batteries it’s designed to take and the type of bulbs that can fit into it. One should not expect a magical transformation – but an LED bulb does bring the flashlight’s usability way up. With one simple modification, it’s gone from something from the 1950s, to something from…well, if not the 2020s, then at least the 2000s. The light is clearer, more focused, and brighter. It doesn’t have that vintage sepia-tone yellow glow anymore, and the black spot in the middle of the beam has been eliminated!

Upgrading the Flashlight

All that said, there are other alternatives, outside of just fitting in D-cell batteries, and replacing an incandescent with a comparable LED. Different types of LED bulbs exist which are more powerful, and there are ways of putting more power into the battery-compartment of an old D-cell flashlight in order to make those bulbs function, therefore, improving the flashlight’s overall functionality.

As mentioned before, AA-to-D cell adaptors exist, and stacking these with AA batteries end-to-end can jump the voltage way up, to double, triple, or even quadruple what it was before – plenty enough to power a bulb that’s significantly brighter (and therefore, more practical) than a a puny 3-volt do-nothing that glows no more-brightly than a Christmas-tree light.

Increasing the battery-power of course means that the flashlight needs a brighter, more powerful LED, since such a drastic increase in voltage would blow a weaker bulb without a second thought. Flashlights this old usually used a 3-volt bulb, running off 4.5-volts worth of power – which explains why they were usually so dim. Upgrading the flashlight to something more akin to modern times would mean running a 12-volt bulb off of 13.5 volts worth of power. All it requires is buying the necessary compatible components, and installing them into the flashlight.

Along with getting a more powerful battery setup, and a higher voltage bulb, the other thing to consider is the type of LED that you end up selecting. Not just in terms of voltage or whether it physically screws into the socket, but also in terms of how the LED actually emits the light that it produces. In other words: The shape of the LED, and the physical positioning of the diode/s within the bulb itself. All these factors will determine how bright the bulb glows, and also, what shape of beam it produces. A super bright bulb is useless if the beam it produces is scattered all over the place. A bulb with the beam focused in one area is equally useless if it’s not powerful enough to produce a strong enough light.

For best results, you may need to experiment with differing types of LEDs and battery setups to find the combination that produces the brightest, most consistent beam. While doing that, it’s also important to remember the physical limitations of the flashlight you’re trying to upgrade. Depending on how it’s constructed, it will only take bulbs within a particular window of dimensions, regardless of how bright they are or how they’re laid out. Be sure to take measurements of the relevant limiting factors, such as the cavity within the reflector housing, the hole in the reflector through which the bulb must pass, the shape and size of the flashlight lens, and so-forth. All of these things will impact how successful your conversion / upgrade ends up being.

So just how good can an LED upgrade be? The results speak for themselves. Of course, this will not work with all flashlights, and not all upgrades will be super-bright – as mentioned – you’re limited by the size of the flashlight, the types of bulbs available, and how much battery-storage you have, but in a best-case scenario, you can end up with something like this:

…which is a pretty good result for a flashlight that’s 70 years old!