Coach Thrasher

Putty Knife Rowing Lights

Here are some pictures of the putty-knife lights that we made for our shells. I was painting my living room last year and noticed these 6 inch putty knives for spackling for sale at about $1.50 at Home Depot. We needed better boat lights. So, I bolted a bicycle light to the putty knife and stuck it in the number-clip. It worked great!

After the season was over, our rigger: Timothy Hodgson, went thinking about this design. He added the second bicycle light so we had fore-aft lighting. He choose bike lights that had side and forward facing LEDs. He had to trim the putty knife a little to allow the lights to bolt on without tilting upwards on the curved putty-knife. He also found a source for clear/white LED lights and made a stern version for the rear.

Since we only need "lights" on the boats, we're not worried about green/red colors for starboard/port. Raw visibility is more important. Generally we get at least 2000m of excellent visibility (measured by our race course). The visibility range is important because it lets other coaches know that we're coming, and since we try to be courteous with not waking each other, we can all plan ahead to not wake other crews.

The nice thing about using bicycle lights is that they are designed for a little water. They can get splashed and rained on without a problem - the rubber seals around the lenses keep water out. The bolting hardware is also fairly environment proof. It's not as good as stainless, or nylon (as the ARCNAV light uses), but it's good enough. They use two AA batteries for power, and last about 3 months without needing new batteries. They can be set to flash, or run steady (we like steady in the morning, less we get headaches!). When using these on a bow-loader 4+, the coxswains like to turn the stern-facing light off so they aren't blinded by its brightness.

The bow light has two bicycle lights with 5 red LEDs each. 2 LEDs on each light face sideways, and 3 LEDs face forwards.

Stern lights use white LEDs and a clear lens. They are REALLY bright, and not to be stared at. The lens provides 180 degrees of stern visibility. We glued standard number clips to the stern decks to hold the lights.

The total cost for these parts is about $15.00. The putty knife is $1.50, and each red bike light is ~$5.00, white lights are ~$12.00. A knife and drill are required to "hack" the putty knife for drilling the mounting hole for the bike-light hardware, and making a notch (as seen on the stern light) for the lights to sit flat on the putty blade. Batteries required: 2xAA. It takes about 5 minutes to assemble one of these with all of the parts handy.

Posted at 09:41AM May 04, 2006 by jason in Hardware  |  Comments[0]