Bladesmith Ryan Johnson enjoyed more than his 15 minutes of fame recently was a result of making a tomahawk for Col. Stephen Bucci. A member of the special forces. Bucci is stationed at the Pentagon serving as a personal assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Bucci told Ryan that he had mounted the hawk on the wall of his Pentagon office. Naturally, Johnson wanted a picture. The next thing Ryan knew, a local newspaper had gotten wind of the story, then a local TV stations covered it, the AP wire service picked it up, USA Today ran a story and there was even a snippet on the NBC Nightly News.
The hawk in question is the Eagle Talon, designed specifically to punch through a Kevlar helmet. Ryan got the idea after talking to some special ops personnel at the 2001 BLADE Show. They saw a spiked hawk on Johnson's Web side called the Mohawk with a long, skinny spike and asked if Ryan to make a combat version of it. Johnson went back to his old engineering textbooks to figure out how much force would be needed to punch through a Kevlar helmet. "[My special ops acquaintances] sent me some Kevlar helmets to play with and we hammered on them till we got what we liked," Ryan said. Of course, the Taliban and al-Qaida won't be waring Kevlar helmets, but that just means the Eagle Talon will be that much more effective.
The Eagle Talon is an integral head-and-handle design made from 1075 spring steel. "The idea behind the integral handle is it's simple to make and it rules out breakage," Johnson noted. The head is differentially heat treated to a Rockwell hardness in the high 50's RC with a hard cutting edge, while the rest of the handle is tough and springy at a Rockwell in the 40's. Weight: 2 pounds.
