Last week I spent a lot of time cleaning on, around, and under my desk in preparation for my post about reusing old ring binders to route cables. In the process, I had to sweep out some neglected corners of my office which, while looking clean enough under ordinary lighting, showed up under photo lights to be harboring colonies of dust bunnies evolved almost to the level of organized agriculture.
Working late at night to beat a deadline, I found myself many times peering under a desk or behind a cabinet with a flashlight in one hand and a broom in the other. So, I thought…well, you can probably see where this is going…TOOLS
- Drill and bits
- Razor saw or hacksaw
- Pop rivet tool
- Soldering stuff
- String or twine (6′)
- Wire stripping / cutting pliers
- Screwdriver set
PARTS
- Rechargeable strip LED worklight (2)
- 22 ga insulated stranded hookup wire (10′ each of red and black)
- Blind rivets, 5/32″ diameter × 1/2″ length (3)
- AAA batteries (3)
- Electrical tape or heat-shrink tubing
MAKE IT
Step 1. Take everything apart
I got these USB-rechargeable LED worklights off the discount table at the big orange store nearest my house. They were cheap and chock-full of useful stuff—a USB charge controller board, an 18650 lithium-ion rechargeable battery, and a decent rocker switch—besides the prize: a 6-diode white LED strip that is just the right size to fit across a broom head. My first thought was to just re-skin all this stuff inside a broom, but I eventually decided I did not want to have to worry about figuring out a way to plug my broom into a USB charger when I wasn’t using it.
So I paid a bit extra and bought a cheap aluminum LED flashlight, too, to serve as a switchable power supply. If you wanted to save a bit of scratch, you could skip buying the separate flashlight and just hack the worklight guts into your broom and be done with it. Also, I bought two worklights, because I wanted illumination on both sides of the broom, but in use it turns out that’s a bit of overkill—one LED strip on one side is plenty. So you could get away with buying only one worklight and no flashlight. If you go that route, be careful messing around with the lithium-ion battery—those things pack a wallop if you accidentally short one out.
This is your basic aluminum-body high-intensity LED flashlight. This model is nice because the front optics ring is actually a separately machined part that’s threaded onto the body (just like the end cap you have to remove to change the batteries). This makes it easy to remove the stuff we don’t need. Unscrew the optics ring from the front of the body and discard the reflector and lens, then use a small screwdriver to gently pry out the LED, exposing the leads that connect it to the PCB underneath. Desolder or cut the leads off at the PCB pads and stow the LED in your parts box for some other project.
I chose this particular broom—a two-in-one angle broom / dustpan set from Vileda—because it has lots of features that make this hack easier: 1) a “skeletonized” head with a readymade space for running wires; 2) a handle that can be unscrewed for drilling; 3) a plastic fitting at the grip end just the right outer diameter (1″) to fit inside…
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