Tactical Flashlights

 A flashlight is a piece of life saving equipment. And just like anything else you’re counting on to save your life, this isn’t the place where you should go bargain shopping. I have seen cheap flashlights fail, and I have seen cheap flashlights not deliver the output that was claimed in their marketing material.

Things you use a flashlight for:

1. Search 

2. Navigate

3. Signal

4. Control (suspect or threat)

5. Positively ID (suspect or threat)

Note that while you can do some of these things some of the time with a weapon light, you cannot do all of these functions with a weapon light. In addition, sometimes weapon lights fail, which means you will still need to be able to use a handheld light and must have one with you.

Any flashlight that you’re considering needs to have the following features:

1. High brightness/output.

2. Simple user interface.

3. Non-slip grip interface.

4. Durable.

5. Water resistant/water proof.

6. Readily available batteries or easily recharged.

7. Tolerable price point.

8. Good factory warranty.

9. Size and weight consistent with your ability to have it with you all the time.

Allow me to discuss each of these at length.

In terms of brightness, there are two measurements that you need to be aware of: lumens and candela. Lumens is a measure of total output, whereas candela is a measurement of the peak intensity of the center of the beam. In general you want a light that puts out at least 1,000 lumens and has a peak beam intensity of at least 10,000 candela. More is definitely better.

The user interface (switching) needs to be simple. When you turn it on, it needs to give you 100% of the light output with the first click or press of that switch. If you need to press that switch multiple times or use a combination of more than one button, that light is not suitable for a tactical purpose. Beware of lights that default to strobe. Intellectually you might think that it would have a disorienting effect on a threat, and while that may be true, you are robbing yourself of valuable visual information, because there are times where there is light, and times where there is no light during a strobe effect. Any of those dark moments may serve to mask movements or actions of your suspect. Additionally you may end up causing self-disorientation by virtue of that strobe. For those reasons I don’t recommend strobing tactical lights, either handheld or weapon mounted.

The grip of the light must be such that it is still readily retainable even if it is wet, dirty, muddy, or bloody. This will usually be accomplished through some sort of knurling or similar. If the surface is slippery and has no grip considerations, it’ll be exceptionally easy to drop, especially if there are any weather or environment issues.

The flashlight must be able to shrug off impacts such as being dropped. In a perfect world you’ll never drop anything or bump anything or use your flashlight as an improvised impact tool. We don’t live or work in a perfect world.

If the flashlight can’t stand being submerged in a puddle, pool, sink, or similar, it is once again not suitable.

The best flashlight in the world is useless without power, so getting that power needs to be a simple process. If those are disposable batteries and you don’t mind buying those batteries and keeping spares, you are all set. If you don’t have that arrangement, you may wish to get something that is rechargeable. Certainly you can get removable rechargeable batteries, but being able to plug the whole flashlight into something is preferable. Most of the recent tactical lights out there come with a USB-C interface that allows for easy recharging, either at a desk or in your car.

There are some amazing lights out there that are quite expensive. For instance, the Modlite OKW is highly rated and has an impressive candela output (69,000). It is also $309.00 as of this writing. It is also likely that 3 years from now flashlight technology will easily outshine (see what I did there?) what we’re looking at today, and from that perspective alone, I’d rather spend $70-$120 now, and again 3 years from now, rather than $300 every 3 years. That said, it is your money. Also, at the end of the day it is always possible that your light could get lost or stolen.

No matter how well made something is, the possibility of it not working is always present. For that reason, you need to have some level of confidence in the company to offer fixes or replacements.

Companies that I know will stand behind their product:

1. Surefire

2. Streamlight

3. Fenix

There are a few others that probably will, including Nitecore, but I haven’t dealt with their warranty service, nor do I know anybody who has. For that reason, I am hesitant to broadly recommend them, despite having had really good success with their lights in the past.

Some lights are too big to be useful. The multi-celled Maglights or similar tend to fall into this category. The smaller handheld lights that I recommend can live in your pocket or on your belt whenever you leave the house, and therefore they’re much more likely to be with you when you need them.

So now, for the specific recommendations:

The Fenix PD36 Tac just came out in May. I purchased one immediately and have been using it at the range, the Academy, and at my part time job. Top output ranges between 2000-3000 lumens, depending on mode selection. Tactical mode defaults to 2000 lumens and has no lower modes to get stuck on. Duty mode lets you switch between varying outputs based on your needs. It also has a lockout so that if you want to carry it in your pocket it won’t accidentally activate. To recharge it you must unscrew the base and take out the battery, which has a USB-C port on it. This light retails at right around $100.

If you don’t like the Fenix brand, Streamlight makes an excellent flashlight, the Protac HL-X USB. Output is 1000 lumens/27,100 cd. It is slightly chunkier than the Fenix PD36R, but still quite capable. It can use CR123 batteries or a rechargeable battery.

While I haven’t had to use Nitecore warranty service, I am experimenting with one of their lights, the P20i. It has a maximum output of 1800 lumens, which is solid. It doesn’t have mode memory, so if you cycle it to a lower output and then turn it off, it’ll default back to the highest mode, which is an excellent feature in the tactical universe. It has an external USB-C charging port with a cover on it to retain some level of water resistance. It also has a “strike bezel” which may or may not enable you to break glass with it. (I haven’t tested this.) If you like that set of features but the bezel is too big for your uses, the smaller P10i shares all of the features in a smaller package.

There are many others out there. Surefire makes a durable light with an excellent user interface, but their total output is less than the Fenix brand. Their best tactical flashlight at this time is the EDCL2-T. The cheapest I can find it right now is $147.89. That said, it is a USA made product, and for that reason alone you may wish to consider it.

I have tried out several Olight products in the past. Their output and durability is usually OK, but I’ve never liked their switching/user interface. More recent versions have gotten better, but they’re still not in the same class as their competitors. They do offer sales on occasion, and the discounts during those sales can be substantive. If you want to take a chance on one I would understand, but please take a look at the switching before committing.

If you need a small administrative light for non-tactical tasks, I have become a very big fan of the Streamlight 66320 Macrostream USB rechargeable.  It takes up very little room in a pocket or bag, and it has a decent and usable output for tasks that don’t involve looking for things that go bump in the night.

While you don’t need to have the best and most awesome light, you should consider something serviceable that meets your needs. Even if you rarely or never venture out at night, you are one power outage away from having no light available unless you brought it with you.

Please note that my Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase any of these items through these links it will get me a small percentage of the cost of the item, but at no cost to you. This helps me offset my expenses for running a business, such as hosting fees and buying items to review. Thank you!

Proximity Lessens Perspective (part 1 of several)

 This will be a bit stream of consciousness, and for that I apologize, but there are a lot of moving parts to this concept in my mind. The first that I want to discuss is quite practical and terrain based, but the concept applies to tactics, techniques, protocols, and above all else, dogma. We'll take a look at the other items later.

I wanted to talk about proximity and how it relates to using terrain and structures. You can use these things to your advantage, or your disadvantage. One of the simplest concepts when it comes to situational awareness is to go around corners in wide fashion. This opens up your vision and allows you more time and distance with which to make decisions. If you crowd a corner and walk around it blindly, anything around that corner is a surprise. That surprise is probably not going to be somebody from Publisher's Clearing House wanting to give you a check for a million dollars. It may be a benign individual or individuals but you may carelessly run into them, or it may be somebody or somebodies that would like to take your wallet, your phone, or much more.

When it comes to using cover to stop ballistic threats, it is almost always advisable to be at least an arm's length from that cover, if not more. Obviously terrain and structures may not afford you the ability to offset that cover as much as you'd like, but taking more of it gives many advantages. The further back you are from your point of cover, the more you'll be able to see, both beyond and around your cover. If you have somebody shooting at you, you'll want to be able to track them, because there is no rule stating that they have to stand still. Our natural inclination when somebody may shoot at us, or is shooting at us, is to hug that cover for dear life. I have no idea why this inclination exists, but I've observed it in countless videos of gunfights, and I've heard officers talk about it in their debriefing after a critical incident. 

Another potential advantage of being back from your cover is that if any bullets strike the edge of that cover they will likely change direction slightly, and that distance you've taken may cause the bullet to go past you, rather than to find you. This isn't something you can count on, but if it works I will take it. This is especially true when it comes to using an automobile for cover. I've personally skipped bullets off a hood and into a target that was directly behind a car. I am not saying that an assailant will do this on purpose, but an inadvertent application of this principle will still injure or kill you. If that target were several feet further removed from the vehicle but still behind it, my bullet would've gone harmlessly over the target without hitting it at all.

Angles can either help you or hurt you. Things that won't stop a bullet may very well disrupt its flight enough to deflect it, and given enough distance, can cause a severe deviation in the bullet's ultimate destination. I've also seen a hollow core interior door skip .45 ACP slugs enough to completely miss a target because the bullets grazed the door. 

Back to the original point of this posting though, is that the distance you take from your cover can give you much more vision than being directly up against it. Without visual cues to guide you, you won't be able to pick a good choice. You must be able to see in order to effectively fight, advance, or withdraw, and to do that, you must stay back from your cover.

Clean That Optic!

 

The clean begins!

So if you carry your pistol or shoot your pistol or both, eventually that optic is going to get dust/lint/fingerprints/stuff on it. That will also lead to you wanting to clean it. Now I don't say that this is the perfect method, but this is how I clean mine.

Firstly, unload that pistol, and double check. (Yes, I know, but I have to say it.) Field strip it, and clean the pistol itself however you want. When you're ready to clean the optic lens or lenses, rinse them off first. If I'm at home I just run some faucet water over them, but if I'm out in the field I'll take a water bottle and do the same thing. I do this in case there is any grit present on the lenses. I don't want to drag that around and potentially scratch the glass. No matter how durable the lens and what sort of coatings there are on it, you'll potentially scratch it or gouge it if you drag around grit on it.

Next I take a Zeiss lens wipe and wipe off the lenses. The good thing about those wipes is that they are cheap and readily available. You can get them from that link, Walmart, and probably some other places. Those are good for optics, glasses, and your cell phone screen, among other things. That wipe will get any oil, grease, or other stuff off of the lenses.

Lastly I wipe on a dab of Cat Crap with my finger and then distribute it/rub it in with a microfiber cloth. This keeps any fog from forming on the lenses and helps to keep moisture from sticking to the lenses. 

I do the same stuff for my rifle optics. There are a lot of ways to clean optics, but this method has worked really well for me for a really long time.

If you're local to Northern VA, this is my favorite tactical shop.

Please note that my Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase any of these items through these links it will get me a small percentage of the cost of the item, but at no cost to you. This helps me offset my expenses for running a business, such as hosting fees and buying items to review. Thank you!

Knife Sharpening

 

This posting is going to reflect my experiences with knife sharpening, as well as what products are available in 2021. It isn’t comprehensive, as any comprehensive article would need to account for every sharpening system and technique available, and there are a myriad of them. These are just the ones that seem to work the best for me, or the ones that I have experience with. I will make note of the fact that the items I’m mentioning in this article have competitors in similar price points and function. You may very well find a competitor or knockoff for any of these items at a much-reduced price. I would be cautious about going exceptionally low end due to the possibility of it not working well, breaking, damaging your knives, or a combination of some or all these issues. If a sharpener is particularly poorly designed, it could cause or contribute to the possibility of injury as well.

There are several factors that should be considered when it comes to how to sharpen your knives. They are, in no order: cost, technique, space, and time. If you have all the time and money in the world, the options are certainly greater than if you have almost no time or money. Your own commitment to learning how to sharpen a knife needs to be factored in as well.

The absolute cheapest and easiest way to sharpen a single knife would be to own a Benchmade or Spyderco and send them back to the factory for factory sharpening. Some other manufacturers may offer a similar service, but I know that both Benchmade and Spyderco will do this for you. That will cost you the price of shipping, and in some cases $5 for return shipping. If you only need to sharpen a knife once and don’t need to have it for a few weeks, this method has a lot going for it. You need absolutely no technique, it takes up no space, and the only time commitment is boxing it up and shipping it off. This is fine for one or two knives, but eventually the wait time and the cost of return shipping will start to add up.

Some of my favorite Benchmade and Spyderco knives:

Benchmade Bugout

Spyderco Para 2 (I carry this one almost daily!)

The next option is a sharpening stone or set of stones. The cost on this is entirely variable, as I have seen some really cheap stones, all the way up to some high-end Japanese stones. The time and technique factor for this is going to be high. Free hand sharpening of blades requires that you keep a consistent angle on the knife as you draw it across the stone. If you want to take a deep dive into that world, I’d recommend watching Burrfection on YouTube. He’s got a series on how he sharpens knives, and that would be a good place to start. He also has several videos on knives of all sorts. I should mention that he’s a big fan of high end custom Japanese knives, so if you start watching those videos it is likely that you’ll be tempted to buy some product down that road. You’ve been warned!

If you want something relatively inexpensive that holds a consistent angle for you, the Spyderco Sharpmaker is a decent option. As of this writing it is around $75. It only requires that you draw the knife straight down on two different ceramic sharpening sticks. My experience with it is that it is OK for maintaining an edge on a knife, but very time consuming to bring a very dull knife back with it.

A step up or over from that may be the Lansky sharpening system. The price can be less than the Sharpmaker or slightly more, depending on the set that you get. The Lansky system uses a clamp to hold a sharpening guide setup on the knife blade, and then you use stones that you screw down to metal rods. I have seen people get good results with this setup, but the ones I’ve played with never gave me a very consistent angle, due to the metal rods not being exactly straight. If you want to try this one out, I’d recommend checking the angle of each stone/rod setup before using it on your knife.

Lansky With Regular Stones

Lansky With Diamond Stones

Knife makers typically use abrasive belts to put an edge on a knife, and an abrasive belt can certainly be used to bring back an edge on a knife. You can certainly free hand it on a belt sander or use one that is set up for angle guides. The cost is quite variable depending on the belt sander/grinder that you buy. If you want something that is set up specifically for knives, the Worksharp Knife Sharpener is around $80 and works pretty well. It doesn’t typically generate near as much heat as some of the bigger belt driven systems. You can also get the Ken Onion version, which is more expensive but gives more options in terms of sharpening angles. With a belt system you can sharpen a knife fast. If you aren’t careful, you can also ruin a knife fast, either in terms of taking off too much metal or heating the knife up past its heat treat. Note that technique is very important when it comes to using a belt driven system.

Similar in some ways to a belt system, a rotary wheel system can be fast as well. Cost is also all over the map. Higher end systems such as the Tormek can start at $450 and go over $1000. Much like a belt system, a rotary wheel/stone system can get you a sharp edge fast, but also like the belt system, a rotary system can wreck a knife in short order if you don’t know what you’re doing, or you lose focus on the task at hand.

I will say that if you’re going to be sharpening a lot of knives and don’t want to turn it into an all-day chore, a belt or wheel system is probably where you will end up. Whichever one of those you choose, get a cheap knife that you don’t care about too much and practice getting an edge on that knife. It’ll save you some headache and heartache when you’re sharpening a knife that wasn’t cheap and that you care about.

One of the sharpening systems that I use quite a bit is the Apex Edge Pro. It has a shelf that you hold the knife on to keep the sharpening angles consistent, and the setup that holds the sharpening stones is robust and keeps a consistent angle as well. I have gotten a knife edge polished to a mirror shine and the edge so sharp that it splits hairs with this system. The downsides to this would be cost and time. The initial investment on an Apex system is going to be at least $200, and more like $250 if you get some of the extra items that you’ll probably end up wanting anyway. And to get that knife to a mirror polished edge took me close to 30 minutes, maybe slightly longer. Not a big deal if you’re sharpening one knife, but it adds up if you’re sharpening all the knives in your kitchen.

Spyderco Para 2 sharpened with the Apex Edge Pro

A similar setup to the Apex is the Wicked Edge. I say similar, but that is only in terms of concept, because the Wicked Edge is more expensive. It does have the advantage of clamping the knife in the middle of the sharpener and then working on both sides of the edge simultaneously with two stones. I have tinkered with one, but I do not own one. I am not saying this to be pejorative of the system, but only to tell you that the cost is real. That said, if you’re sharpening a lot of knives, this would be faster than the Apex system, while not being as quick as a belt or wheel. 

Your needs will dictate where you land on this spectrum, but for me, most of my general sharpening happens on a Worksharp belt system. It works well for kitchen knives and pocketknives. It has never delivered a mirror finish to the blade bevel for me, but it has certainly generated a more than useful edge on any knife I’ve tried it on. The last time I was sharpening kitchen knives with it my wife was skeptical, but changed her mind after doing some chopping in preparation for dinner. I do break out the Apex system when I want to reprofile a knife or just put a very very sharp edge on it. I’d say that only about 10-20% of my sharpening happens on the Apex, but I’m always satisfied with the result when I do use it.

Please note that my Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase any of these items through these links it will get me a small percentage of the cost of the item, but at no cost to you. This helps me offset my expenses for running a business, such as hosting fees and buying items to review. Thank you for reading this review!

Learning the Trigger: A Journey

 

There is an aphorism attributed to Bruce Lee, regarding the stages of learning:

1.       A punch is just a punch.

2.       A punch is no longer a punch.

3.       A punch is just a punch.

I do not consider myself a master of either the punch or the trigger, but I do have some observations that I took away from my journey into trying to run the gun.

My first pistol was a Glock 17, second generation. If you do the math you’ll realize that I’m dating myself here. My observations are somewhat specific to Glocks, but also to any pistol with a trigger that has any sort of tactile take-up, break, and reset.

When I first shot that pistol, my ability was quite clearly in the meme category, i.e. “trigger make gun go bang, hurrr.” I had no idea what was going on beyond loading the gun, aiming, and pressing the trigger until the gun was empty. Along the way I stumbled into the fact that if I was slow and deliberate with the trigger, my accuracy was much greater! I will also not attribute any great intelligence or discovery to me, by the way, let me get that out of the way.

At some point when I got more serious about shooting, I read a lengthy thread on Glock Talk. Just now I brought up that site and see that it is still in existence. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad about that but let me say that at some point there was some decent information there. Perhaps there still is, but I fear to tread on that ground.

Anyway, that thread talked a lot about all the nuances of the Glock trigger. It talked about take-up, initial resistance, pressing into that and encountering yet more slack/resistance, trigger break, over travel, and trigger reset. I was enraptured, and quickly set out to hit the range and play with all of those parts of the trigger press.

What I quickly discovered was that shooting from the reset was easier and typically more accurate than pressing completely through the trigger each time. After some serious rounds downrange with my newly found knowledge, I became quite accurate. I was proud of my accuracy and as many of my friends can attest, I was quite good at target shooting.

Then, of course, in my evolution, I started shooting competition. I was the most accurate competition shooter around. I was also definitely the slowest. Having stage times that can be measured on a sundial is no way to do well in that venue. I tried a lot of things to get better/faster. I would ride the reset between target transitions. I switched out my trigger to a very light trigger. One friend told me that I better not sneeze while my finger was near the trigger. I think he called it the “achoo-bang” trigger. Between that trigger and riding the reset, I sent more than one errant round downrange while either not on target or not where I wanted to put the bullet. Obviously my strategy wasn’t giving me the greatest results.

One of the earlier side effects of obsessing on the reset was pinning and creeping. Having to have the trigger hit the reset perfectly every time requires a much more delicate forward motion of the trigger. One of the other possible side effects of the reset obsession is that “click-bang” that some get into, where they think that the reset is their signal to fire, rather than all of the other conditions needing to be met. And while they may think that click-bang means they won’t experience anticipation, my experience watching shooters tells me otherwise…

One instructor told me that I should move the trigger forward at the same speed that I pressed it rearward. That seemed to help but still did not net me the results I wanted. It did give me more speed, but not the kind of splits I was hoping to get.

Then there was an interlude in my life. A change of work forced me to shoot a Sig P226 in traditional double action format. I hated that gun, it was a pig, it was a boat anchor, but it forced me to do a few things. Firstly, it forced me to be somewhat visually patient with the first trigger press, given the 12 pound first double action pull. And secondly it forced me to reset fast, or at least come forward faster, due to the second and subsequent trigger presses. At some point I realized that you can reset the trigger in a hurry. Like while the gun is going bang kind of hurry. My splits got low and my accuracy was still quite good.

After much work, much trial and error, and much instruction, I understand what to do, or not to do with all of those parts of the trigger. Interestingly at this point I don’t think about them overly much, but I can always slow down and use the parts of the trigger press that help me at any given point. (Accuracy over longer distances, such as 50 or 100 yard pistol shooting would definitely be one of them.)

So I don’t know if any of this has been useful to you or not. I do think that I might have regressed some now, because mostly I just hold the gun on target and “press trigger gun go bang.” But it took me a long while to get there.