Shatter Glass Easy with Hammerspike

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Here’s a simple, innovative piece of kit for you, and it’s just a couple of weeks old—the Hammerspike, built for Shieldspike LLC by Greg Medford of Medford Knives. Originally designed for a TL on Phoenix Police Department’s tactical unit, the Hammerspike’s designed to replace tools that weren’t actually designed to break glass and those ad hoc glass-breaking implements we see a lot of.

Greg explained how it started. “He came to me and said, Hey, can you make me something to reach around a ballistic shield and break some glass? So, we made this so a guy can hold a ballistic shield, have it Velcroed to the back of a shield, pop it off, smack a window, stick it back on the shield and go back to a firearm. There’s some good cover by being able to come up on the rear quarter of a vehicle, like if someone is barricaded inside, get the window out.”

The Hammerspike is small and designed around economy of motion. You can use it on its own, of course, but it’s made to employ from behind a body bunker or other shield without exposing the user.

Working overseas? Hook it to the side of a 3-day pack or bungee/carabiner it to the back of your chest rig. On an SRT or SWAT unit? Mount and carry it in the shield with Velcro, or their kydex mounting system. It’s certainly less cumbersome than some of the kit we’ve seen guys humping for dubious reasons, and it’s light enough that if you had to you could hook it through a flashlight or PR24 ring.

“Let’s say you’ve got a carbide tip on a magazine,” Greg explained. “That’s something some guys are doing. Or, say you have a carbide tip on a knife…now you’re putting your hand through the glass, with a weapon, right into the guy?”

It makes sense. No point putting a weapon in there if you have, to and for our cops or guys in MOOTW operations, what’s the risk? What’s the liability of putting a breaker on a loaded pistol or rifle in a high stress environment and slamming it through a window and something goes wrong?

“So our intention was, look, let’s get your thing for shooting people uninvolved with anything to do with breaking glass. Let’s not have you use construction tools, baseball bats or field expedient implements. Let’s let you use a tool that takes minimal energy that allows you to break the window without exposing, compromising or exposing yourself.”

For guys that are using shields, it’s just an easy tool that allows you to stay covered up while taking out a window. For individual soldiers, it’s not so big or heavy he wouldn’t want to take it on an urban patrol. For MPs, Security Forces, and LE, they can smack out a car window from the cover of quartering without resorting to a collapsible baton (or God forbid something that goes bang). Good for, say, if someone is slumped over or non-responsive inside a locked vehicle (or if someone is barricaded in a car and needs a friendly, helpful extrication).

We’re guessing it would be a good tool for EMTs, firemen and angry fathers on date night too.

Check out the video of how easy the Hammerspike is to use.

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