EOD Breacher Bar

[VinnieD]

I've been thinking lately of adding this to my EDC instead of a fixed blade knife. i already carry two folding knives, and I'm left thinking, that I'm a lot more likely to encounter a situation where prying is needed, than I am a situation that calls for cutting but can't be covered by a folding knife. Enter the EOD Breacher Bar. It has a flat profile, an optional kydex sheath, you can wrap the handle with paracord, it can take an edge, and the steel is built more like a crowbar than a knife making it ideal for situations where leverage would be called for.

So does anyone here have one, and if so feel like sharing opnions on it?

[JohnnyMayhem]

They work.

Here's a couple of good threads involved.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=25106&hilit=breacher+bar

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=22750&hilit=+breacher+bar+

[VinnieD]

Thanks. I've purchased it. Wow where they really get you though is in the accessories. Between the sheath and lock on the price basically doubled. Oh well, a good fixed blade knife would still be more expensive and wouldn't be built to function as a pry bar.

[Dawgboy]

I have one. It's not an edc for me. It's in my toolbox though. I found it works great for shearing off the heads of pop rivets.

I generally use it as a chesel more than a prybar, but it does pry things well...

[JohnnyMayhem]

Yeah CountyComm is just really hard on my wallet. I gotta stay away.

I also need to get some more breacher bars. Some bastard stole one of mine at work. (luckly I do have the backup and the ugly bar still)

[foxx]

There's always this...http://www.topsknives.com/product_info. ... cts_id=225

[VinnieD]

It arrived a couple of days ago along with the sheath and clip.

The bar its self feels heavier and sturdier than a fixed blade knife. This thing is clearly a small crowbar that can be sharpened, not a knife that might survive prying with, and that's perfect. I tested it out on a few things. On a few nailed together boards it pried them into their base components with ease. Hacking at a solid log, chunks were fairly easy to take off. It would tear through a solid piece of wood given enough time. Against cinder blocks it demolished the block but also scratched up the surface a bit. I wouldn't advise wrecking cinder blocks all the time, but it proved affective.

It's a little bit bigger than the pictures made it appear which is a nice surprise. The bar's blade area has a starter knife style edge along one side that's ground on one side, and a single sided chisel at the top, that could be used for driving into stubborn gaps or splitting wood with the aid of a hammer. The backside of the blade is blunt and slightly rounded. The edges are just there for wedging, they aren't sharp, but could be sharpened with the aid of a bit of grinding or a lot of time with a course stone. I should stress these aren't even dull edges, they're just wedges, not unlike what you'd get buying a cheap hatchet from a hardware store. If you want this thing to be a knife, you'll have to do some work.

The handle area is a bit interesting. There's a half octogon at the base that you could pound with. There are four holes in the handle. At the bottom there's a hole near the base, good for a lanyard, there are two holes in the handle around the center, that are good for either attaching slabs or wrapping paracord. More interestingly this version has a fourth hole near the back side that count comm suggests using as a tie off with paracord to use the breacher bar as a handle for pulling, dragging, towing and whatnot. I'm not sure what exact application they had in mind when adding it, but having some handy paracord around the handle will give you some options here if it should ever come up.

Overall the breacher bar is a pretty fantastic piece of equipment. It can be sharpened into a sturdy fixed blade knife, or just kept as a handy pry bar good for wrecking most anything. It's also weighty enough to do some bashing with. I'd really like to test this thing against some coconuts to see what it would do to a Z skull.

As for the accessories. The kydex sheath comes with a few brackets and screws to help you secure it however you like it. It grips the breacher bar firmly and you can use the included screws and nuts to tighten it up a bit more if you want a tighter grip. That's about all there is to say about it. The separately sold clip I highly recommend. You can attach it to the sheath horizontally, vertically, or diagonally with three screws, letting you secure it however you like, be it to your belt, or in my personal preference to a shoulder rig with the handle facing downward for easy access with either hand.

The breacher bar is simple, inellegant, and brutal tool for when you need to wreck something, break down crates, back you up in the bush whether just camping, or full blow SHTF. Obviously I'd imagine it would be handy for actual breaching as well. A handier way to gain access than a full size crowbar, and it can double as a fixed blade knife. A worthy addition to any bug out back, toolbox, camping supplies, or even EDC.

[Polie]

I used to keep one of these in the truck all the time:

http://www.sears.com/ames-true-temper-1 ... ockType=G5

It's a 72" pry bar. Now if I could only make a sword out of one......

[crypto]

of all the things I'd like to make into a sword, a 17lb prybar is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

Unless you're planning on cutting it into like 5 pieces and making lots of swords.