Anyone remember the Stealthhawk?

D

David43515

Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
175
Back when I apprenticed under Jerry, we made a synthetic knife from a hand lay up plastic laminate called MP45 made by Dupont. Dupont hasn't made the stuff in years, but it was just about the strongest stuff I've ever come across. Milling the basic shape was insane! It wore through bits like nothing you've ever seen, but it was a dream to grind with a sander. You could even sharpen it with an emory board like you'd use on your nails.
Jerry had originally gotten some requests from a bomb squad in the Washington D.C. area. They wanted something that was nonmagnetic and wouldn't conduct electricity.To be honest I think he did it for a challenge more than anything else. They were 2oz and were the only plastic knife I've ever seen that Jerry couldn't break with his bare hands. We used to have a video at the shows where we hammered them through oak posts and punched holes in 55 gallon drums.
 
They do get mentioned here occasionally. But you have just added to the limited knowledgebase around MP45 by teaching us that the supplier was Dupont. I don't think that has ever been shared before. What else do you know about MP45? Was it a glass fiber composite or carbon or ?? Did Jerry buy it in sheets, or make the layup in-house?
 
Because of the Stealth Hawk, Shomer-Tec forged a close and ongoing relationship with Jerry and the Busse crew.
We sold every one we could lay our hands on and would welcome any thing new in the nonmetallic knife world made by Busse back into our line up of unique products.
We would hand wrap every handle with either 550 cord in black, OD,or tan paracord or with our own special thin floating 550 Spectra paracord.
Each one came with a Kydex sheath from Busse.
 
I have the one for sale, thanks for the plug.

Mine is the one with the swedge.... It's super sharp for plastic, Jerry cut hemp rope with it. They are amazing. I bought mine off of a bomb tech from Santa Monica
 
Honestly, If i knew it could come across the border unscathed i would have been chatting with you about it already.
 
The knives you do have MORE than makes up for the lack of a stealth hawk.

There's 2 I "NEED"
 
It's been a lot of years, but I'll tell you what I remember. Jerry is the man with the answers. If I remember correctly he got the details while trying to track down more of the stuff. Dupont made the MP45 as a carbon fiber laminate in sheets. Jerry had gotten all he could just before I began working for him. At that time everything we had was already cut into strips the rough width of a stealthhawk.

Dupont had stopped making it some years before. Apparently the EPA had come in and said that one of the resins used to make it was dangerous to work with while it was in liquid form. So they said Dupont would have to install an entirely new ventilation system in the factories that made the stuff. It would cost about five times more than Dupont made from the sales of the stuff each year, so they just stopped making it.
 
We were told that an undercover drug unit in New York had bought several because at the time several of their guys were getting waved down with metal detector wands when they went in to make large buys. Since the Stealthhawk was one of the only things they could carry in that kind of an environment, they had set up a whole training program around fighting with them.

I should say that the SH was made as a tool with a specific purpose. It was never designed as a self-defense tool. It had a working edge that could saw through hemp rope, and while you could sharpen them up very easily with sandpaper they wouldn't hold an edge like a steel knife.
 
Since they were so strong and light, about 2 oz, we heard once that a dogsledder who raced in the Ididerod bought one to cut up frozen fish for his dogs' food. During those long races they watch the weight of their equipment right down to the ounce, and when he'd seen video of Jerry or Dan driving it like a nail into oak posts and splitting them he had to have one.
 
It was also the first Busse that we thought would be featured in a major movie or TV show, but it wasn't meant to be. Remember they were originally made for bomb disposal work. When they were filming the movie "Broken Arrow" with Christian Slater and John Travolta about the bomber pilots who steal 2 nuclear warheads, the prop guys bought a dozen of them from Shomer-Tec. We heard about that and all went to opening night craning our necks to see the knives, wondering if they'd have any part in the plot or get some screen-time in a fight or something. But they never made it into the movie. On the way home we were all pretty upset. The only H2H weapons used in the movie were a Mag-lite and a hammer.
 
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