Weapons-mounted flashlights, revisited

March 24th, 2007

A while ago, I received an email from a Marine, saying that the SureFire Nitrolon G2 flashlight worked well when mounted on a weapon. I wished him well, pointing out the flashlight was not designed for the stress and strain of firing, but it still might work well, or maybe not.

Flashlights specifically designed for weapons use are expensive, because they are designed to survive any stress, and remain reliable. But part of that cost also involves a rather expensive mount, and often, a remote “tape switch” because the light itself is a considerable distance away from the hand that needs to activate it. The mount and remote switch add to the cost of the flashlight.

I can’t promise cheaper flashlights, but it looks like there is a simple, inexpensive flashlight mount that does away with the cost and bother of the mount and switch. It fits all flashlights with a one-inch diameter body, and is just one product from Viking Tactics.

The key to the mount is the offset that moves the flashlight down near your non-firing hand, and the fact that it clamps to a mil-spec rail, rather than slides into place. Here are a couple of views of a flashlight in this mount.

I installed a Pentagon 9 volt xenon light on my AR15. Because of its length, the flashlight had to be moved far forward, and a remote tape switch brought back to the vertical handgrip. That led to this messy setup, seen from the top:

Using the Viking Tactics clamp-on mount resulted in this much “cleaner” setup:

The pushbutton is easily reached by the thumb, and there are no wires to route, and no remote switch to figure out how to mount securely. Also, since the mount clamps directly to the rail with two cap screws, it doesn’t have to slide the length of the rail to get it to the desired position. I’ve found that most plastic rail mounts for flashlights have undersized dovetails, and require some hand filing to open them up enough to slide and lock onto the metal rails. It took me almost an hour of trial-and-error fitting to get the original mount to fit properly. With the Viking mount, just tighten the cap screws when you have the light in the desired position. You can’t slide the light on or off after that, but it’s easy to remove the tail cap to change batteries.

With the mount costing in the $15-$20 range, this is a simple and affordable way to get a good light on your weapon, if you have the handguard rails to do it.

I have a few spare mounts on hand, and will be happy to send one (no flashlight, just the mount) to anybody who asks for one. As always, first come, first served.