Forging bonds of steel: Elk resident makes knives and 9/11 tribute axe to go beyond remembering

Making Damascus steel knives gave Elk resident Ben Hayhurst more than a hobby. He credits the craftsmanship in his recovery as a wounded veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He’s also using the skills to raise awareness about suicides, and pledge to end suicides, among veterans and first responders. In September, he finished the Spartan Axe, made with steel recovered from the World Trade Center and a firefighter’s ax used at Ground Zero in the days following 9/11.

His crafted piece is at the New York Fire Department Academy but eventually will travel the U.S. It joins the Spartan Sword made by another craftsman, also from Twin Towers’ steel, for a nonprofit Spartan Pledge by Iraq War veteran Boone Cutler as an oath among veterans not to commit suicide and to reach out first to a battle buddy.

Suicide prevention hits close to home for Hayhurst, who knows that some of his unit members took their lives after returning home from battles. As a U.S. Army infantryman deployed to Iraq, Hayhurst and his unit came under attack on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City in a siege now called “Black Sunday.” After being injured and then treated, he returned to Iraq to finish that deployment, but the mental and physical pain remained.

“I was hit with two bullets and got a broken neck four days into that deployment, and I was medevaced back here to the United States,” said Hayhurst, 42, who also was injured by multiple improvised explosive devices. “That day I got wounded, we had eight of us killed and over 60 of us wounded. I had some surgeries and then asked if I could go back. I ended up being back 2½ months later in Iraq and did the rest of the deployment.”

Looking back, he realizes going back that quickly was a bad decision.

“I wouldn’t change anything, but I wasn’t ready mentally to go back. I was having massive panic attacks already, and, when I went back, they got worse and worse. When we got home from that deployment, I got sent in for a mental evaluation, and they said, ‘You’re suffering from severe PTSD and depression,’ so I got out of the Army then.”

He spent about six years in “a medicated haze” from prescriptions to treat his pain and mental health. After a 2012 surgery for his neck, Hayhurst abandoned those meds, turning first to cannabis for relief and then CBD, or cannabidiol, a derivative that doesn’t cause a high.

Soon after, a childhood fascination resurfaced and helped him focus his energies.

In 2014, he watched a YouTube video on making Damascus steel. A couple of years later, he started using the process to make chef and hunting knives, as well as utility knives for military service members.

“It’s where you take two steels, one’s shinier than the other, and you combine them,” he said. “When you make the steel and you etch it in an acid, it shows the layers between the two different steels. You can build up the layers in different ways to create patterns.”

Heated to a high temperature, and if the steels are put together with enough pressure, they’ll bond together and create one piece of steel, Hayhurst said. One of the steels used has 2% more nickel, which remains shinier when a project is dipped in acid while the other steel darkens. Another name is pattern-welded, but Damascus steel has been an accepted term in the U.S. since the 1800s, Hayhurst said.

He and his family – wife Sarah Hayhurst; daughter, 17; and son, 9 – moved five years ago from Lewiston to Elk. He does the forging in his garage. His business, Wreath and Rifle Knifeworks, is mostly word-of-mouth.

The custom-made knives he makes for service members typically are done before deployments to use as a tool in the field, with features such as a glass breaker on the back end of the handle and sturdier materials.

Working with steel provided renewed purpose and focus, along with a kind of therapy, Hayhurst said.

“Part of getting out of the military is you almost feel like you lose your identity because you come from a system that’s very rigid and structured. You know your place in that.”

“(Now) this is what I do and what I’m good at,” he said. “Just creating something from scratch, working with your hands and the mental process of figuring out how to make all this stuff, it’s very therapeutic. It relaxes you. It takes your mind off whatever’s in the past that’s bothering you or whatever’s going on right now.”

This past month, Hayhurst was recognized by the national Veteran of Foreign Wars for its #StillServing award.

The ax project grew from Hayhurst knowing the founder of Warfighter Hemp, Steve Danyluk, who serves on the Spartan nonprofit board.

He’d invited Hayhurst to speak to veterans for a January CBD expo and one night asked him if he’d craft the ax.

Hayhurst considered it an honor. While 9/11 impacted all Americans, it altered many soldiers’ lives, he said.

By spring, Danyluk brought Hayhurst a piece of tower steel and the Ground Zero firefighter’s ax, meant as a template. As Hayhurst began, he realized both pieces could be forged together to create a greater symbolic meaning.

“I thought if they would allow me to cut up the fire ax, I could combine the two. Then that ax wouldn’t just represent the tower, it would also represent the people who went to save the people in the towers,” said Hayhurst, who worked through the summer.

“As I was building up the layers in it, I realized it would be really neat to recognize each one of those people who died trying to save those people in the tower by giving them their own layer in the steel. That’s where the 417 layers came from. That’s all the rescue workers – first responders and the volunteers.

“The official number of first responders who died is 412, but there were five people who voluntarily dropped what they were doing and went to help who died, as well, so 417 is the total number.”

After completing it, Hayhurst couldn’t attend an informal dedication in Spokane because of back pain.

The publication Firehouse ran a September photo of the ax shown with Danyluk, Cutler, Spokane Fire Department Chief Brian Schaeffer and Mayor Nadine Woodward.

“As I finished the ax, I overdid it and blew three discs in my lower back,” Hayhurst said. Injuries from the IEDs in Iraq have caused continuing back pain. “On the day of the photo, I couldn’t walk three steps. It was kind of a bummer.”

The ax will travel for awareness and ceremonies after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, he said. As with Spartan Sword veteran gatherings, a ceremony can be held between first-responder co-workers to take a pledge while they and invited guests touch the Spartan Axe.

Hayhurst etched onto the ax a NYFD logo and the pledge, “I will not take my life until I talk to my partner first! My mission is to serve my community and to always look out for my brothers and sisters.”

While working on the ax, Hayhurst received news that a friend he’d deployed with to Iraq had died by suicide.

During a call later with another member of that unit, his friend Pete Sutherland of Georgia, Hayhurst brought up taking the veteran Spartan Pledge together.

“We were talking about the friend we lost last year, and we were expressing that we care for each other,” Hayhurst said. “We had just been talking about the ax because I was working on it, and I asked him, ‘Hey, would you like to take the pledge with me and to be my battle buddy on it?’ We were both injured in Black Sunday.”

In interviews, Boone Cutler has said the oath is meant to give veterans a pause before they hurt themselves: “I will not take my own life by my own hand until I talk to my battle buddy first. My mission is to find a mission to help my warfighter family.”

Hayhurst added that veterans often won’t talk to most people about military battles, but they’ll open up to fellow service members. He has since talked about Black Sunday, including for a TV miniseries.

“I’m OK talking about it at this point,” he said. “It brings things up and it can be a little challenging, but I feel like we need to talk about these things because if we don’t and pretend it’s not a big deal, then when somebody is struggling and says, ‘It doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal to you,’ I feel like we do a disservice to them by not talking.

“The hope with the pledge is that they reach out and give somebody a chance to talk to them and let them know you’re not alone.”