GreyShark
Enlightened
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2008
- Messages
- 359
I see a lot of people making and carrying lights with strike bezels. I'm not a fan of the idea personally because I mostly see them as a new hole in my pocket and a justification to not let my light through a security check point. I do understand and appreciate the idea of a kubotan however and I keep an open mind to the general idea of thumping an attacker as an option.
Lately I've been trying to work out exactly which light will be my daily carry for the foreseeable future. This light is mostly used as a hand held weapon light for my legally concealed pistol and also as a handy search light for checking out my property at night. Even if there's no reason to suspect a trespasser it's fun to see the deer and other animals. I have arrived at a battery and lamp assembly solution that does what I need. What I've been working on lately is the host body itself. The two contenders are an M2 Centurion and a 6P. Ignoring their virtues as hand held weapons lights I see two two strengths and two weaknesses in each as improvised impact weapons.
The 6P has a beefy body but comparatively thin bezel. I haven't gotten to beating anything with it yet but I could see how the bezel could conceivably be damaged or broken if used as an impact weapon. Not a big deal, it's an inexpensive part to replace and under warranty anyway. I'd just rather my equipment not break when I'm using it just in case I need it to work again before the unpleasantries have ended.
Enter the M2 and it's super dooper shock isolated bezel. On steroids even. I'm confident it's up to some rough handling. As someone once said quantity has a certain quality all it's own and there's a large quantity of aluminum in the M2 bezel. So that brings me to the body. Under the kung fu combat grip ring the body is as thin as an E series. Some might point out that the tail under the o ring is even thinner and that is probably true. In fact I've been looking at 18650 and 18500 bodies lately and that has caught my attention. However in actual use very little stress would be on the tail, even if you cap it with your thumb when you strike. In the case of the extra thin 18650/18500 tails you can even mitigate a lot of that effect by screwing down a clicky with a spacer to offload a lot of the lateral stress to the main body.
So how much does the thin body section matter? Surefire sells E series lights specifically outfitted for clobbering bad guys. They must believe the lights are strong enough. In practice it seems the majority of the force in striking is focussed on the bezel and shoulders of the light.
This even goes a little beyond striking. The light has to have a reasonable chance of surviving other violent treatment such as one might encounter in a life or death struggle. Falling upon it against a hard surface, having something inconveniently heavy and hard swung against it, even the odd car crash or two... preferably experienced from *inside* a car but you never know.
Has anybody done any practical experimentation along these lines or will I be obliged engage in some costly destructive testing myself?
Lately I've been trying to work out exactly which light will be my daily carry for the foreseeable future. This light is mostly used as a hand held weapon light for my legally concealed pistol and also as a handy search light for checking out my property at night. Even if there's no reason to suspect a trespasser it's fun to see the deer and other animals. I have arrived at a battery and lamp assembly solution that does what I need. What I've been working on lately is the host body itself. The two contenders are an M2 Centurion and a 6P. Ignoring their virtues as hand held weapons lights I see two two strengths and two weaknesses in each as improvised impact weapons.
The 6P has a beefy body but comparatively thin bezel. I haven't gotten to beating anything with it yet but I could see how the bezel could conceivably be damaged or broken if used as an impact weapon. Not a big deal, it's an inexpensive part to replace and under warranty anyway. I'd just rather my equipment not break when I'm using it just in case I need it to work again before the unpleasantries have ended.
Enter the M2 and it's super dooper shock isolated bezel. On steroids even. I'm confident it's up to some rough handling. As someone once said quantity has a certain quality all it's own and there's a large quantity of aluminum in the M2 bezel. So that brings me to the body. Under the kung fu combat grip ring the body is as thin as an E series. Some might point out that the tail under the o ring is even thinner and that is probably true. In fact I've been looking at 18650 and 18500 bodies lately and that has caught my attention. However in actual use very little stress would be on the tail, even if you cap it with your thumb when you strike. In the case of the extra thin 18650/18500 tails you can even mitigate a lot of that effect by screwing down a clicky with a spacer to offload a lot of the lateral stress to the main body.
So how much does the thin body section matter? Surefire sells E series lights specifically outfitted for clobbering bad guys. They must believe the lights are strong enough. In practice it seems the majority of the force in striking is focussed on the bezel and shoulders of the light.
This even goes a little beyond striking. The light has to have a reasonable chance of surviving other violent treatment such as one might encounter in a life or death struggle. Falling upon it against a hard surface, having something inconveniently heavy and hard swung against it, even the odd car crash or two... preferably experienced from *inside* a car but you never know.
Has anybody done any practical experimentation along these lines or will I be obliged engage in some costly destructive testing myself?
