I went hiking with some buddies yesterday morning starting in the dark at 6:00 A.M. We used headlamps till it was light enough to see. These things have really improved in the past few years!
It occurred to me that a headlamp would be perfect to help me see down into mortises I'm trying to clean out. Even though my shop is well lighted, my old eyes still have trouble.....or sometimes I've got my head into the indide of a piece I'm building trying to apply a finish, or repair a mistake or add something.....
Anybody use headlamps in their shop?
Seems a company called Petzl makes the high end ones. Their are cheaper clones from China out there, too.
Handy things, but I only use them for crawling around under machines. If you need more light, go to a S/H office furniture shop and get a big old draughtsman's Anglepoise or Luxo, preferably wall mounted. One with a magnifier _and_ a hinged lid over the top can do double duty as either light, or light and magnifier.
If you really want a headlight, get an LED one. More efficient, less power needed, so lighter batteries.
No, they make the expensive ones. I've a pile of Petzls with bust switches - even the cool one with the non-round screwthread.
I have one hanging in the shop, but mostly I use it when I'm working on a project outside and it's getting dark -- sure helps to see the nail I'm trying to hit.
Craftsman sells a set of glasses frames (no lenses, though they also come with safety lenses) with a tiltable LED spotlight on each earpiece just back of the headpiece...should work like a charm, and IIRC, they're not too costly, maybe $15.
Charlie Self "There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up." Booker T. Washington
Occasionally - only when I can't get a lamp in someplace.
I saw Andy's note about a pile of busted ones. I have a Petzl. So far it's still alive. I had great plans for it - but have cooled on it.
I find that tilting my head to aim the lamp often makes me need to shift my gaze. Or vice versa. It hangs on my pegboard more often than not these days.
That said - when I find a need for it - it is very useful. It's just a rare occurrence.
A few months ago i bought a magnifying glass attached to a head starp that just happens to have lights on both sides. I have only used the lights a few times but they provide an amazing amount of light. must have looked wierd to people who drove by while I was cleaning my gutters the other day in enar darkness.
A bicycle can be moving 10 times the speed of a good hiker, and deliver the same multiple of impact to the light in a crash. 8^( Hiking lights are too easy to out ride the beam on a bicycle. These are also the lights used by most Police bike squads.
With a $400 HID headlamp, I can ride for 3+ hours and see better than daylight. I can recharge it in one hour.
Oops. I visited REI today at lunch and wound up buying a Petzl Tikka Plus before I read you "don't buy Petzl" warning. (I posted a response similar to this hours ago but got a message that tere was a network problem -- I haven't seen it yet so it looks like it was probably lost in the internet...
Assuming the power switch is good, let me offer rec.woodworking my unscientific tradeoff analysis... between The Petzl MYO 5, The Petzl Tikka Plus, and the Black Diamond Gemini Headlamp.
Petzl MYO 5 Petzl Tikka Plus Black Diamond Gemini Price $75 $33 $38 Halogen yes no yes # LED's 5 4 2 batteries 4 AA 3AAA 3 AA tilt yes yes yes weight 4.9 w/0 batteries 1.3 7.1 battery location back front back focus yes no no water resistent yes yes yes extra bulb halogen LED halogen number of settings 5 3 + blinking 3 battery life/setting ??? 80/120/150/480 7/?/500 halogen range 100 meters N/A 70 meters LED range/setting ??? 15/10/5 ~10
The hologen bulb feature is nice for a beam -- in case you need to see whether that's a bear making a noise 100 yards away. It does drain the battery though.
I got conflicting data on the Black Diamond battery life -- one web source said 7 hours on max brightness and 500 on the dimest. Another said 4 on the max and 69 on the dim.
My decision: since I use mine mostly for woodworking, not avoiding cliffs in the dark or spotting wild animals about to attack, I wanted comfort. This drove me to the Tikka plus because it's very light and the batteries are in front so if I lay my head on the bottom of a cabinet I don't have a battery pack as a pillow. The halogen beam was not as important.
I use a LED flashlight in a headband made to hold it. I think it's actually made to hold a mini-mag lite. That way, it does double duty -- you can use it as a normal flashlight too.
FWIW, resist the temptation to get one of the cheap Luxo lookalikes that Home Depot and the like sell. While they work fine for a while, when the ballast goes you can't get it fixed--with a real Luxo parts are available.
Didn't mean to seem to be putting down Anglepoise--should have said "genuine Luxo or Anglepoise" and you can add Dacor to the mix as well. I recall rows of lamps with the distinctive Anglepoise ballast in the drafting department at Hamilton-Standard in the early '80s. Probably have been there since the '30s.
My comment was directed at the Taiwanese knockoffs that go for about a quarter the price.
I liked that movie. The cover of every pulp SF magazine of the Golden Age brought to life. I suspect from the comments at IMDB that the younger generation doesn't appreciate it.
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