Hey this is Ryan - Founder of RMJ Tactical. I’ll start with a short answer and work from there.
The quality at RMJ Tactical has never been better. Over the last few years the edge geometries have been refined, the machining improved dramatically and the heat treat tuned by metallurgists. We use a variety of high grade materials but more importantly the materials are worked by true artists and craftsmen.
Each time we’ve looked at a steel change we personally test the hawks and knives to determine performance. The 1075 passes my personal testing with flying colors. Some of the crew test in the woods, some on the 55 gallon oil drum, I tend to test in the junkyard on cars.
Here’s where most people (especially on this forum) will disagree with me. Any blade performance depends on a three legged stool: Steel, Edge Geometry and heat treat. I’ve tested Shrikes in more steels than we’ve offered. It is my opinion that most of the modern made high carbon steels would pass a hard breaching test if the blade geometries and heat treat were both dialed in properly. And if most makers were being brutally honest they would agree. I like the 1075 more than the 4140. Over the years feedback has shown us that the original thicker blade geometries we used needed thinning down and to be slightly harder. 4140 is an awesome steel but falls short with the thinner geometries compared to higher carbon steels. Also, we were already pushing 4140 towards the end of it’s hardness range. To go harder meant finding something that could be hardened to a higher rockwell and tempered back. You mention that 4140 is stronger - technically it has three times the tensile strength of other carbon steels. That sounds great and is great on a bull dozer where forces are huge. But for a handheld tool it doesn’t buy you anything. You already can’t develop the forces required to catastrophically break it using your arms. 80CrV2 is awesome steel - no two ways about it. You mention that it is easier to work than 4140. This is exactly opposite of reality. 80CrV2 is a big pain in the ass to machine. It costs us over twice as much in tooling to machine as 4140. It is my goal to transition Shrikes back to a forging in the future - 80CrV2 is not available in the sizes we need for forging and quite frankly the erratic availability of it has pushed us to 1075 - what I originally started making Eagle Talons with. I know there are guys out there trying to hype super steels for their hatchets and hawks - that’s great and more power to them. But when you see someone putting all of their eggs in the steel basket they are often trying to cash in on the flavor of the month steel. 1075 is not sexy. But it’s been made into a lot of hatchets, crowbars and hammers over the last 70 years and it’s continuing to break locks, cut safety glass and cut wood for us. Hope that helps. And thanks for serving your community!
RMJ
These are very much niche tools and while you can (and I have) used them for some outdoors testing, they excel as a portable breaching tool and potential backup weapon.