Eye of Sekhmet - Exotic Hardwood and Copper - STO Flashlights

Introduction

We are a team of two friends who have loved flashlights for as long as we can remember. Being able to turn our hobby of building flashlights into a business has been a dream of ours for awhile and we’re excited to finally start. Our main passion is super long range throwers, there is just something about a solid beam of light projecting into the sky that is just wonderfully entertaining. And with that comes one simple goal: building the longest throwing, highest candela, lights in their class. Packing the highest Kcd numbers in a given size whether it be for raw performance or practical throw in an EDC package.

Product lineup

Eye of Sekhmet (EoS)

In Cocobolo and Copper

We’ve all seen countless new lights come out in materials like copper, brass, titanium, stainless steel and more exotic alloys and some of them have some nice machining but in end they are all still metal tubes that light comes out the end of. We wanted something more interesting, something anyone can pick up, flashlight enthusiast or not, and appreciate. While we may think many lights look nice, to most people they are just a flashlight and titanium or not, it isn’t going to inspire beauty. Members of our team have training in classical woodworking, so when we started working on this light we saw a chance to apply that skill, to be able to incorporate the natural beauty of wood. This light harkens back to a time when things were handcrafted by artisans and finished to show the inherent aesthetic of the materials. Paired with raw copper, brass accents and just a hint of modern flair with blue GITD elements around the switch and charging port we think we’ve made something quite striking, something you could gift someone and before even knowing what it is they would instantly recognise it as something of elegance and beauty.

And of course because we are really still performance junkies at heart we have a range of options for all your needs, from the 260kcd night piercer variant to high lumen and high CRI models and even one of our particular favorites, the Nichia 319A which projects a hexagonal beam profile. All stuck to a big 1/8in thick aluminum or copper block to suck away heat. Comes with internal high discharge batteries and micro USB charging. Uses a conventional switch to prevent parasitic drain and a brass switch rod for a clean and crisp switch feel. Driver firmware is either Bistro or LD-3 depending on the LED and drivers are mounted in thermally filled potting compound mounted close to the backer plate for good thermal sensing and cooling (LD-3 has the thermistor mounted on the MPCB).

In Red Oak and Aluminum

In Cherry and Copper

A shot of the finish on the back and engraving

Wrath of Ra (WoR)

150 yards

With up to 1 million candela, equivalent to 2km ANSI throw distance this is on par with the most powerful LED throwers on the market. Comes with 4 modes, moon, low, medium and turbo. Five thermal upgrades including a potted driver keep the LED and high efficiency buck driver cool to allow maximum time in turbo. For maximum throw these come with a tuned SrAl powered GITD spacer ring that sets them at optimal focus and keeps the head aligned.

Strike of Hyperion (SoH)

150 yards

For a more portable and practical jacket-pocket sized light, we built the Strike of Hyperion, it spits out “only” 400kcd, 1265m ANSI throw but in a much smaller package. Well beyond any light it’s size and more than double other modded high throw lights using the same host. These really are the zoomie that performs like it should, provides nice flood when working close up with crazy throw when you need it. These have the same thermal upgrades as the WoR but also include the more feature rich Bistro firmware with thermal monitoring that works particularly well when combined with the potted driver. They also come with our GITD tail rings for a bit of added flair. Since these lights are so practical but still slightly too large for pants pockets we've also released a quick deploy holster so they can be easily carried.

Other products

280+kcd C8 with GITD tail ring

We’re also working on a number of accessories including our first release of GITD tail rings for a number of popular hosts. They use the much brighter and longer lasting SrAl based GITD materials and have a more interesting effect so are all around more impressive than the common GITD tail boots.

Testing

Each light is tested for it's main performance spec and includes a verification and authenticity card.

Pricing

Being this is budget forum I’m sure price will be a point of contention for many of you and in a way I agree. I also love cheap lights because it allows me to mod them just the way I want. I’m sure many of you are thinking “well I could build that for less” and that may be true but the majority of flashlight enthusiasts are not modders. The skills, tools and large time expenditures it takes to mod a light appear as free when doing personal projects but when selling something built in the US, with careful attention to detail, machining, and expensive custom tooling it’s really not cheap. And while we would love to be able to keeping doing this as a hobby and make no money the reality is it has to be at least somewhat profitable to justify continuing and allow us to work on new projects.

What LED and upgrades are you using?

We know people will want to know all the different tweaks and tricks we put into this light, especially the emitter. I know I would be dying to know so I could mod a light for myself. Here is the thing though. We really want to keep building cool lights, pushing boundaries, and doing new things in the future. But there are a lot of other established companies and builders a lot better positioned to sell lights than we are. So while, obviously, people will probably figure out most of what we’ve done eventually, we’re hoping this will give us enough of a head start before other modders copy us.

Cool! :+1: Good Luck with your endeavor!!! :beer:

interested in the 2Mcd+light

Looks great!
Plans for a quality version of a SK68 (size wise, EDC, pocketable) with a lot better performance, user interface, color tint (NW)?

Actually have a prototype I’ve been carrying around for a week or so now that is just about that. 18650 tube light size, Bistro firmware, nice easy to operate zoom motion, 100Kcd (630m) , it really is a sweet little light.

Just to call it in advance (as I already did when they posted on reddit last month), I think they’re using Wavien collars. I expect the emitters to be something pretty ordinary - XP-G2s, probably.

The Strike of Hyperion is a Jax Z1, which is clear in the pictures at https://www.silentthunderordnance.com/.

They do state it’s based on the Z1 in the description.

Iirc xpg2 modded Z1’s achieved low 300kcd without collars.

For $250 though… not that much better performance than an xpg2 cometa.

Cool. Yet another option in the flashlight market.

As pointed out it doesn’t quite fit ‘budget lights’ but considering STO is offering deft-x performance at a fraction of the cost (and without need for any further modifications!) I don’t think the pricing is obscene.

As far as not disclosing the led type etc… I don’t think that matters too much on a forum like this. We’re reasonably aware of what throws and what doesn’t. Members/modders are always performing tests to squeeze everything they can from a given setup. STO even admitted they’ve been lurking for a while. I wouldn’t be surprised if they already have personal accounts here.

Good luck STO, I hope it works for you :beer:

A cool little mod we finished up the other day, S41 with dramatically increased throw. Boosted throw from 6Kcd to 32Kcd pushing the ANSI throw out to 357 meters. Also added a red lit tailcap, blue GITD tailring, bistro firmware, and a potted driver. A wonderful little light with a good balance of lumens and throw.

Another project we’re working on is possibly some C8 based lights. Results are pretty good so far, the picture below is at 280kcd, although some late night tweaking last night I got up to 294kcd peak/283kcd ANSI (30 seconds). Pretty sure this is the longest throwing C8 ever, or at least that I’m aware of. Crazy throw from a light this size, well over 1km of throw from a little C8.

Is this still with reflector on the C8 ?

Pm price

Interesting S41, I’m guessing it now has an aspheric setup?

Nice, out with lumens in favor of cd, smart to stand out!

@giorgoskok
Yes. PM sent.

@will34
No. We’re still running a the stock TIR in that setup. Which honestly throw wise is just kinda meh, the centers are just a frosted diffuser instead of a proper lens like a carclo. We’ve gotten 33kcd out of a carclo triple which of course has a fair bit less frontal surface area to work with, actually it’s been my EDC for awhile now.

@The Miller
Thank you. :slight_smile: We just find throwers more practical for our outdoor use, we’ve built and tried high lumen flooders before but they never seem to really impress. We really like throwers more even if they require a lot more finesse to build, I guess that’s the fun of it too. Hopefully we’ll find a market in those who share our love of crazy high Kcd throwers.

Nice lights and good luck w/ your endeavors.

Correct me if I am wrong. You sell “Zoomies”[“Strike of Hyperion”/spot to flood] and Aspheric[Wrath of Ra] lights only?

Most of my lights to walk my Husky CAPO on the trail are modified search lights! I also LOVE throw. However, they have plenty of spill so I can see directly in front of me.

I had a modded Zoomie and did not like it and I would have no use at all for an Aspheric light.

I would think most of your customers would be hunters where they could mount these lights on their rifles.

I guess the question is are you going to build lights like the K40vn-1400L/400Kcd,M2Xvn 1200L/280Kcd?These lights have plenty of Peripheral light[spill] and more than enough throw for their size!Obviously both reflector based lights.

,thanks,Wolfdog Capolini!

280kcd in a C8 is very impressive. Best I’ve seen was around 200kcd with XPG2 S4 2B.

Since old XPG2 is impossible to find, I bet they’re using a wavien collar along with another led. Oslon Black Flat, maybe?

Yes so far our “production” lights have been aspheric/zoomie based but we are working on more production reflector lights, the C8 being sorta the first test of that, with larger lights following.

Bump, just added the new Eye of Sekhmet light and updated a few things. What do you guys think of the EoS?

I saw it on your website last week…looks really nice but I’d like to see some beam shots of the different “performance modes” that are available.

Working on getting some more beamshots, here is one of the 319A. It’s a tricky light to take beamshots of, what is hard to tell from the picture is past the main hotspot and spill there is a more gentle spill that extend well past that out to a total of 150 degrees of beam angle with a brighter area right at the limits. It’s quite an interesting beam profile, cool that it keeps the die image and gets such good throw so we can get the hex image from the 319A or the 260kcd and of course square image from the Night Piercer variant and they still both have spill unlike an aspheric.