Frankenbardic ?

As the nights draw in, I was thinking about upgrading my Bardic lamp to LED. There have been a few posts on this over the years however as technology in this area is moving at pace, has anyone done a seriously powerful upgrade recently ? Has anyone gone to 9 volts or more ? The good news is that modern LEDs seem to handle either polarity as Bardics were assembled for filament bubs where +/- didn't matter

 

I fitted a LED replacement bulb for my lamp. Its similar to this. Ebay 272804638344. or search for LED torch bulb.
Mine is the 1 watt version, there was a 0.5 watt version available, but sold out.
A couple of drawbacks are that the colours are a little washed out and also when the battery runs low it just goes out without warning.
There does seem to be a 3 watt version available now. That would, I assume really wash the colours out.
However the lamp is really useful to actually see with now.

 

Thank you Mr TseTT,

Washout with the green filter is a bit of a problem, even with a normal bulb. I was on the footplate last Saturday night and the green lamp from the guard was a bit ambiguous at times, more like white with a green tinge. I did a bit of research and it appears that there is a translucent green paint that is compatible with the Perspex filters. Others have applied a coat to darken the green with good results. It is from Tamiya (code 81525 I think) and is a water based acrylic resin so will not damage the filter, in theory.

I think I have identified the best replacement LED bulb however the excellent folk at Maplins appear not to carry it as standard stock. I'll try to get hold of one and if it works, I'll post the details here.

As for the battery, a good boy scout always carries a spare.

 

I have fitted a 3 watt Cree led. As you say the green is a bit washed out. On suggestions from others I used 2 coats of docfafts Artiste Aniseed Green transparent glass paint that I got from The Range.

 

Glass paint can contain solvents which may damage the plastic so beware. I understand that if the filter gets damaged then it's easier to find a new lamp than a filter.

 

The paint I referred to in my post above is a water based glass paint so I don't think it will damage the plastic filter.

 

I have used that docrafts water based paint as well and it works well, i converted all 3 of my bardics by converting from the dry cell battery to a 3"D" cell holder with rechargeable NIMH batteries and tried a LED lamp in the one i painted the green filter with the docrafts paint, it works well

 

One of our drivers did an LED upgrade and went the whole hog and installed a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery. He hasn't charged it in 6 months and its still good, plus a whole lot lighter too. Bardic has a nice little recharge socket on it.

 

I upgraded my Bardics to LED lamps. The LEDs were made by Nicelite, and supplied by BikeCo. Nicelite have the following note on their website:

"BARDIC SIGNAL LANTERNS work well with the white NL322 on clear and filters. Some Bardic green filters are rather weak and can be made denser with stained glass paint to avoid being "washed out" by the high brightness and whiteness of NL322. The alternative NL312 are used to preserve filter colour density on several preservation heritage railways and railroads."

On mine, sure enough, I found the red and yellow aspects were fine, but the green was really washed out, as Snifter notes - more like white with a tinge of green. So I got some water based glass paint from a company called Curtis Ward (they do art supplies). The paint in question was made by Docrafts, and it's Aniseed Green Transparent Glass Paint. Being water-based, it didn't harm the filter at all, and is very translucent, so it didn't dim the output, either.

Two coats did the trick, so the green light is now clearly green! (links below)

http://www.reflectalite.com/LEDpage.html

http://www.bikeco.co.uk/index.php?mod=productDetail&itemid=454

https://www.curtisward.com/aquaglass.html

HTH

PS - I've been running my Bardic (with LED) on an Ever Ready AD.28 battery now for three years, and it's still going strong.

 

Washed out colours with LEDs are mainly due to the temperature (colour) of the light changing. Incandescant bulbs give a yellow tinged light (that we percieve as white) so the green looks ok. With led, the colour is white, not yellow so green filter appears washed out as it was never designed for this temperature of light. Green colourwash sounds a good idea.

The effect is best illustrated by looking at led and conventional filament headlamps at night. The latter appear visibly more yellow when compared side by side. But we percieve them both as white when seen individually.

 

You're getting your definition of 'white' confused with colour temperature. A 'white' light is one where all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum are at equal intensity, but variations give it a 'tint'.

I assume the LED version of a Bardic uses suitable LEDs for red/white/green/yellow.

A tungsten bulb typically has a colour temperature of about 3000K. So-called "white" LEDs are usually a blue LED with a phosphor coating that is excited by the blue light and is used to correct the colour temperature to something more acceptable; that's why we have a choice of colour temperatures for domestic lighting. Small torch bulbs tend to be much more blue in their rendering; even lights intended for use in film and television may say they're 3000K but a spectral analysis will show a peak in the blue.

 

Think we may be using different definitions of what is white. Our cognitive processes percieve LEDs as white just as we do incandescent bulbs or flourescents, best illustrated in the old days of slide photography where by strip lights gave a green hue and domestic lighting an orange colour cast. but we both see them as "white". That is what I meant. Our perceptual mechanisms "correct" the colour temperature discepancy and we "see" them all as white. LEDs weren't around then so don't know what cast they would give...

 

Exactly the same with digital cameras if you turn off auto colour balance and take control of the colour yourself. LEDs can vary wildly. Some are fairly neutral, others give yellowish casts, some magenta/purplish casts, some are greenish. General LEDs really are the work of the devil when it comes to photography unless they're specifically intended for photographic applications.

 

Colour temperature - right! Thanks, Marty - that explains a point which puzzled me; why did the LEDs seem to affect the green so noticeably, yet only make the red and yellow brighter, but without significantly affecting the colour?

Cheers!

 

Some of my work takes me into the film and television industry. As a result I am very sensitive to variations of colour temperature and can easily tell a 'daylight' LED from a warm white, similarly when a TV camera isn't producing a "white" when it should be.

 

Dredging up an ancient topic...

The abovemetioned Nicelite NL312 appears to be no longer obtainable - their website is gone, and the only seller on eBay says he's out of stock and not planning to restock.

Anyone know of any other supplier of reliable 0.5W P13.5s Warm White LED bulbs? The only other ones I can find at the moment are on Amazon from a Chinese firm called "Ruiandsion" - anyone any experience with these?

 

I recently bought a replacement bulb for my Bardic from TorchUpgrades (via Amazon, but available direct from https://www.torchupgrades.com/gb/un...niversal-non-polarity-1-9v-1w-120lm-cree.html)

PS. The green looks a definite green to me.

 

Good morning all, I thought it was best to just resurrect this thread as its bardic related, I’ve been tasked with tidying up a few bardic lamps and some have become a bit rough looking has anyone fully stripped the paint off and repainted one and has any advice or recommendations

David

 

I've not, but I have tried dismantling one (as it wasn't working) - you may well find the three screws that hold the switch mechanism to the top of the case difficult to get out, as the heads will probably cam out as soon as you try to put any torque into them...

 

As regards the ‘paintwork’, I think they were originally bare aluminium or some form of die-cast alloy. If it is painted, you could have it soda-blasted – I had some 1960s FIAMM air horns done that way and they came up really nice. I then used etch primer, an undercoat, top coat and lacquer. I think it came to about £40, but if you decide to do it yourself, I’d use paint stripper formulated for varnish & lacquer, as it’s not as aggressive as general paint stripper. If you do want to repaint it, you’ll need to prime it in either etch primer or Special Metals Primer, then just paint it.