A light for my bandsaw and a discontinued Ridgid worklight
Posted By RichC on January 24, 2019
Today would have been my dad‘s 90th birthday.
Here is something he would have enjoyed…
With it being so cold this week, it was a good time to be working in the basement workshop in the evenings. Besides working on getting my Hitachi Miter Saw fitted to my workbench and dust collection for a new bookshelves project later this winter (will blog on that this weekend), I’ve been cleaning and sorting “junk” 
(much of it my dad’s) that has piled up on the workbench and elsewhere. There are times I’d rather just have a dumpster to toss everything in and start fresh, on the other hand, I know as soon as I throw something away, that is when I’ll need it (perhaps a brother law to Murphy’s Law).
One of the minor improvements and a distraction from organizing and cleaning was to re-purpose a light for my bandsaw. Brenda usually walks through the discounted area when she goes to IKEA and this time ended up buying a small broken LED desk light. She has one on her nightstand and “I think” thought having one at work to help with reading fine print might be helpful. Instead, she asked if I wanted it.
Perfect for the bandsaw. The weighted base is removeable and the two mounting screws fit nice on the aluminum housing of my 11” Shopsmith bandsaw giving nearly the perfect amount of light to the cutting line with the flexible head … and if I leave the light on, no big deal … it has a very low power drain.
One of my requests for Christmas this past year 
was a Ridgid work light that operated off the 18 volt lithium batteries for my drills and other battery powered power tools. The reason I asked for this particular light is that it seemed pretty durable and the inverter could power a normal lamp bulb in a standard 110 volt bulb socket. The request was shortsighted by me as while the device uses a standard socket, the safety switch and maximum wattage was designed to only power a fitted curly florescent bulb that were the efficient bulb of choice before LEDs. With a little modification, I was able to fit the base of an LED (without globe) in to the housing and it work fairly well. Truth be told, I can see why they updated this light now that so many more efficient and brighter work lights are on the market … there just isn’t a need for one that inverts power to run a proprietary 110 volt bulb sized to fit in this housing. It works for me, but does NOT get a thumbs-up recommendation as I should have looked at the GEN5X lights – but it worked great when working on Taylor’s car (NO CORDS!).
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