OK Vec you sold me that this will be a excellent weapon. How will it do as a TOOL? Will this piece of gear do the double duty?
it will do double duty, but the
Melee Handle is made for
gross movements mostly,
like when you are swinging for your life. - the middle of the handle is
along the axis of the balance point, so it will be very good at small detail work in utility i think. the bend at the butt of the handle is angled to stay out of the way when you smash with the poll as you grip the handle in the center, but that isn't good technique IMHO for utility purposes - great in combatives though, but i don't see hyper-extending one's wrist that way in combat - i'd hate to get licked in the nose with the pointy end of the handle in close quarters - casually hit Prey in that nerve beneath the nose with the butt of this thing, and you will be in a position to own him.
i want to make a
Utility Handle for the
Daisy Cutter head, and ultimately make a
Hybrid Handle for it, which will be longer than the
Melee Handle, but use the same angle technologies that make the Melee Version of the
Daisy Cutter so superior for combatives.
i'd also like to sell the head alone, so folks could make their own handles and tools for it. we'll see what develops.
i designed the
Daisy Cutter with combatives in mind - but as a former grunt i wanted to have something that was good for utility too. the SF guys that have looked at the
Daisy Cutter are going wild so far, because there is evidently a
viral thought pattern amongst them that is pro-tomahawk these days - we shall have to see what develops there, that's out of my hands beyond providing a tool that i would carry, if i were them.
Dose it chop wood and split it?
....well, in tests so far with the protoypes,
which are inferior to what the finished product will be, they indicate that calculations of the head design are consistent with actual performance.
(that means it is a splitting mother-effer, fellow-babies.)
splitting is where proper conventional tomahawks typically suck compared to hatchets,
but you are normally penalized with weight and crappy balance if you go the hatchet route; the head weight of the
Daisy Cutter is 16.1 ounces, which is light enough and leveraged for effect with the handle to be a deadly weapon, but heavy enough to split better than a
Cold Steel Rifleman's head
(which weighs twice as much approximately) while being barely heavier than my favorite stock tomahawk, the
Cold Steel Trail Hawk head
(which typically weighs about 15 ounces, unhafted).
the cross-section of the bit on the Daisy Cutter is wedge-like, but the approach angles make it slice like a thinner edge, while allowing you to split average stationary logs with it with one shot,
similar to a splitting maul, while the grooves reduce friction when passing through the hard stuff.
one of my biggest concerns is that i may have made too many of the fullers/grooves actually, for the typical user, because folks will tend to use
too much force with the
Daisy Cutter when a little force will do, and they might be slamming the edge into the rock beneath the log as it flies out of the way.
this ain't no overpriced camp hatchet.
tutorials will probably be important.
i do a lot with
extra thick and robust edges in some of my designs, then make the media
approach the edge at an angle, so that the edge
acts like a thinner blade. with the
Daisy Cutter i took this concept a step further and made an unconventional handle
( - the Melee Handle design concept) that allows the user to kind of go on
"Auto Pilot" so the operator is just looking for zombies to smack, and the ergonmoics and orientation of the blades optimize penetration and impact, and less mental effort is spent with fine target indexing.
i'd be really surprised if the
Daisy Cutter wasn't made illegal in some places eventually, once folks capture the essence of how it is used;
fast as a baton, with the slice of a khukri and the pentration of a spike.
plus the Melee Handle itself is a weapon, ...forget the head, that's just going to be the warning in skilled hands.
Will the edge hold up to softer metals (escape/rescue duty)?
i reckon so.
i've made similar edge geometries in
butter-soft 304 Stainless that could
work all day on sheet metal, so i am confident that this will do much better.
we are looking at
5160 or 1075 that is zone tempered for initial production, plus the physical attributes of the head and handle will give the head more durability than one would expect because of the edge configurations and approach angles.
it's very exciting to see this family of designs being produced much earlier than i thought they would be.
God Bless TOPS, is all i gotta say.
both these steels and the
edge profiles are easy to fix in the field too, compared to others that i have used.
the
Daisy Cutters will be covered by Equinox Coronado with our
Happiness Guarantee anyways, if we sell them
(vice TOPS selling them) so that is a lot of insurance built into a
purpose-built War Hawk if ya ask me.... YMMV.
Can I use it to breach walls of modern materials (drywall and studs/ cinder block/ stucco) and Adobe or hard mud construction?
yep.
the
Bomb Poll and handle design is going to make those things surprisingly easy - i can't overemphasize that enough - the bit end will do well too - but i purposefully built the Bomb Poll to tear through stuff just like that,
especially if you have to leave the room without using the door!
accessories that
you can make or buy from us will make it better though.
think about putting a big spike attachment overlooking that
Bomb Poll, for instance - or an adze or E-tool attachment. i am going to make a ballistic plate for myself that can double as a shovel, for instance - good for EOD purposes when ya gotta dig out a dud JDAM in the middle of a ville....
i don't want to make tools for it
when there are things laying about that the end user can make themselves -
it makes a less-expensive tool, and a smarter user that way - any grunt with an E-tool could probably cannibalize the head off an
E-tool and adapt it to the
Daisy Cutter for instance,
especially with some construction hints....
Will it slice and pry, duty more solders will need to preform than CQB?
it's definitely a slicer, despite how wedge-like the edge is, for reasons mentioned
above.
it's got a lot of pry in it too, but i am looking at changing the Melle Handle slightly to accept
"force batons" that will make the handle extremely tough compared to the stock handle - the final mterials will be pretty gnarly strength-wise IMHO, but a Marine can destroy anything in my experience amongst them
(it was always amusing until i got tasked with making them and their counterparts in the other services tools - doh! - hahaha!) - so i'd like to give the grunts some more options.
Will this weapon work in a more mundane roll as a survival tool. Not as a rock is a hammer or a knife can be a screw driver in a pinch, will it shine? should I be ready to
retire the rest of the collection and replace them with the Daisy Cutter for camp, chores and car/truck carry?
:thumbup:
....maybe replaced by the
Utility Version of the handle, brother.
we shall see!
it should
"shine" in both variants, but i expect that the
Utility Handle will be what most folks prefer over the
Melee version.
i wouldn't personally carry or design something that was too much weapon and not enough tool.
this will do (for me, at least).
myself, i get kind of tired of the same tools in the field - it's too much
like eating the same thing for months, which i have had to do.
i'll always cherish my custom
Swenson Sabretooth Knife and my leather-handled Estwing Hatchet, etc. -
BUT if i was going out the door and never coming back, i'd grab the
Daisy Cutter and
two ECO Hawks and never regret it probably - because they are designed by me for my purposes, where no other good tools are - but to me there is more to tools and weapons than utility,
especially since we are survivors, and the more advanced amongst us can make do with anything.
i just did a little post in the Wilderness Forum here, with pics of some of the stuff i carried in
the Dez last week....
I think I know but would like your impressions (the way you do).
hopefully, all that garbage i just puked out helps a little, brother.
it is intriguing that something that is so straight-forward in one's hands, as i contend that the Daisy Cutter is, requires so many words to describe....
the
Daisy Cutter is a work in progress still, but it has impressed me so far.
if it sucked, i wouldn't be working on it.
HTH.
vec
