This isn’t a brightest flashlight in the world type of hack (but
it does manage to push about 1000 lumens). [Stephen Webb] is
finding a use for leftover parts by building his own simple LED
flashlights. As you can see, he uses PVC parts available at any
hardware or home store. These are a good choice; they’re cheap,
light weight, resilient, designed to be water tight, they easily
thread together and have connectors that reduce the diameter of
the fittings. The electronics use standard size cylindrical
Lithium cells. These are found in many types of Laptop and Power
Tool batteries. Often when one of those battery packs bites the
dust it’s an issue of one or more bad cells. [Stephen] desolders
the cells, and reuses the good ones in this project. We didn’t
see any mention of a recharging technique. Does anyone have any
advice on how to top these cells off if they’re not in their
original power pack form?