are these good 'knives'?

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hardheart

hardheart

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This is in reference to Noss4's testing. Much of the criticism leveled at it says that the items that do well in the tests aren't good cutting tools. That the only way to survive the abuse is to compromise the design and the performance expected of a knife. I don't believe it. Yes, the large choppers don't have thin spines or deep hollow grinds, but the are big choppers.

The Busses do the best in the testing, and the fans are extremely dedicated. So I would like your opinions on what the knives are meant to do, and what the limitations are in the designs.
 
u convex any Busse and you have a functional razor knife. i could fillet fish with my Battle Mistress....... dead stock they are great also.. far and beyond "The Best Production Knives on any Planet..."
 
I don't typically chop with my knives, but my Busses do it and anything else I need my knives to do.
 
To me, a knife's value is determined by how well it will HOLD an edge. I have some nice knives, customs and production. Thus far, I've found nothing that retains its edge better than Busse's INFI. That fact combined with the outstanding durability of the knife, generally makes it my choice for a fixed blade.

I've put my battle mistress through hours of chopping on oak, cedar and mesquite, and the damn thing still shaves hair off my arm.
 
Busse knifes take a better edge than any other fixed blade I have had,even ones that are much thinner.They also hold that edge.
I was sitting here this morning making up some lanyard orders,I was using my HD and it was push cutting the cord better than my BM Rift.The BM still has the factory edge and will shave arm hair,the HD has a used edge on it from cutting wood splinters for a fire last night.
Amazing knives.
 
I agree with what has been said and I’ll add that INFI is very easy to sharpen and maintain. The Busse users I have are sharper than my Spydercos. They might not have come that way but after use INFI ‘s edge will jump back onto the blade with a strop or steel. It seems that the Spydercos or Reeves or Benchmade knives (although fine knives) take a ton of work to sharpen again. The only knives - I have used - in the same ball park with respect to edge are the Older Bark Rivers made from A2.
 
I could not possibly care less about this topic. The activities undertaken by the person in question can not in any fashion be considered "testing". It is nothing more than abuse to failure.
 
hardheart said:
The Busses do the best in the testing, and the fans are extremely dedicated. So I would like your opinions on what the knives are meant to do, and what the limitations are in the designs.
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THe knives are meant to blow your mind and exceed expectations for one.

Depending on the model, as with everything, each will have its own pro's and cons, but I can't think of too many limitations due to the warranty, the service, the people,the product, the edge and it's retention etc,etc:D:thumbup:.


and lastly you got a lot of nerve sir:eek::) Glad you worded the question the way you did:D:thumbup:

Might have been a blood bath.;)
 
every knife noss has tested has been a survival knife, large camping, or a search and rescue/professional use type knife.

the SOG Seal 2000 is possibly the best example of this as noss himself is a diver, and has a professionals perspective on what he want's his knife to be able to do, or rather - what he wants it to not do during any use potentially needed during an survival situation while on the job.

if these were skinners, if these were slicers, if these were kitchen knives - I would agree with the idea that the tests are nothing but abuse, and that the basic geometries required to provide the excellent cutting performance negates there ability to take such usage, such "abuse".

but the knives he tests (save for the moras) are already 3/16"-1/4" thick. they are already made to be crappy cutters by the thickness of their geometry. when you pick up a 1/4" thick knife, do you think "oh, this is only meant for cutting meat and skin, never bone or wood of any kind. it's to delicate for that". I tend to think that I can pry with it - because it's almost the thickness of a prybar already. (at least with saber ground knives, there have been a few hollow ground full heigth knives I've picked up that had no bussiness having 1/4" thick spine with how thin they were at the edge. - but none of noss's tests had such knives.)

so, I don't think it's fair to say that the geometry required to not fail the tests makes the knives crappy cutters when they already have so many elements of being crappy cutters in the first place. the only exception I can think of to this would be the becker bk9 and potentially the chris reeves. the becker has a very thin edge, but I don't know about the chris reeves, wether they have thin hollow grinds or now.



now, wether the tests themselves prove anything of value, and wether they are so far outside of the scope of the knives potential work as to be worth doing at all... I think it's faulty to believe that the tests show what a knife should become, based on the results. by seeing where the blades fail, during what use, and on what material, you can see what the blades are, how brittle the steel is, what toughness and strength the steel represents, and how the geometry intermingles with those metallurgical aspects to produce the blades overal reaction to stress. if you never expect to baton with a knife, or to have it fall from your hands onto croncrete or rocks - then you can assume that any blade that passed tests up to the batonning phase will be okay for your uses as far as breakage is concerned. now you look for more involved testing regarding sharpness, edge retention, and how the overall heat treat effects the edge itself, rather then the whole geometry.


sometimes seeing a knife destroyed for the sake of seeing how it breaks is worth it. it helps you better understand the knife itself. and you get to see what it will take to break the knife - in human hands. something that normal catra and mechanized edge testing cannot show, but only hint at. "but why would you ever need to use it for something so severe that it would break like that?" - if it's the only tool I have and i'm crazy and blind from heat exposure, thats when. and all of the knives noss has tested are the kind of knives that people will buy for situations that might put them there.
 
i do beat the hell out of one my customs every once and a while, like a Knifetest minicamp, I don't expect people to treat knives like that but, when you make over .250 knives people will treat them a little different than they do a thin one...

 
hardheart said:
1-This is in reference to Noss4's testing.


2- So I would like your opinions on what the knives are meant to do, and what the limitations are in the designs.
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1- I would not use these "test" at all as my giude to buying a knife. JMHO.

2- Busse's are meant to do whatever your task on hand is. They are many designs...such as thin EDC's, thick EDC's, small skinning, fillet knives, camp, combat, chopping, etc...even Zombie killers:eek:

As far as limitations in there designs...way less than ANY other knife company. How many company's have this much range in design? You can get anything from small thin pointy .125 BAD to a large .320 FFBM or even a zombie killer AK.
 
My experience with Busse is that the combat grade blades are quite poor cutters straight from the factory. The customs and LE's tend to have a thinner edge for some reason. This is just my experience and some may not agree.
 
peter469 said:
My experience with Busse is that the combat grade blades are quite poor cutters straight from the factory. The customs and LE's tend to have a thinner edge for some reason. This is just my experience and some may not agree.
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i've found that to be correct across the board. every busse I've gotten that had it's true factory edge could shave, but it a very obtuse edge, simply polished well. a majority of them also came with very thick edges (meaning even if the edge is 25 degree's, it gets real thick real fast from cutting edge to coating.

knives are meant for cutting, edged tool's are meant for whatever purpose you need a thick prybar like tool that can sheer things with. when you try to mix the two geometry wise, they are likely to suck to a certain degree on both accounts.
 
This is why we keep egging noss on to test one of those skinny, full flat ground ASH1's. That should settle the debate (at least for a little while) as to whether Busse's are as tough as they are because they're brute thick prybars that can't cut (not true, though the factory edges sometimes leave a bit to be desired) or if Infi and the Busse HT really is all it's cracked up to be. It's been my experience that the 1/4 inch thick busses cut no worse than any other manufacturer's 1/4 inch thick blades once the user resharpens them, and usually better due to how wide the blades are.
 
peter469 said:
My experience with Busse is that the combat grade blades are quite poor cutters straight from the factory. The customs and LE's tend to have a thinner edge for some reason. This is just my experience and some may not agree.
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I'm one that doesn't agree. I have gotten a few Busse's that has come not so sharp. But for the most part all CG's I have got came with just as good or better edge than my LE's. For instance my CG BATAC's, BAD's and Comp finished blades came sharper than any Busse's (or any other brand's) that I have.
 
yoda4561 said:
This is why we keep egging noss on to test one of those skinny, full flat ground ASH1's.
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I am certainly not in that "we" group.

Most all I know that have been here a while could care less about his so called "test".

With all the people in this room putting up there own pics and vids I see no reason to look elsewhere. Esp there.


edit- last time this noss "testing" came up here's how it went and how Jerry ended http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=552331

Havn't seen the test done by Jerry yet.
 
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I am not sure if I have seen any of his tests.
Is it the same guy that tested the Strider fixed blade a while back that was linked all over the place.
If so all he does is bash a knife until it breaks.I saw no testing.
A knife that will last a long time against that abuse does not mean it is a good knife,just that it is built different.One that snaps on the first bash might be better.All depends on what you need the knife to do.Looks like to me that with the type testing he does if I ground an edge on a 1/2 steel bar his testing would show it to be a great knife.
 
u812 said:
A knife that will last a long time against that abuse does not mean it is a good knife, just that it is built different. One that snaps on the first bash might be better.
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You're exactly right. In fact, if I were on a picnic and needed to spread butter on a piece of bread and then cut that annoyingly tough old crust off, I'd definitely prefer a plastic serrated knife to an FFBM.

On the other hand...if it will also still cut 10,000 lb. test nylon strapping like tissue paper after chopping 2x4's and batoning through landscaping timbers, and if I may find myself in circumstances that require me to stake my life on my knife, I think I'll take that first one you mentioned.

I'm one of those who appreciates Noss spending the time and resources to separate those out for me, by whatever you choose to call his methods--testing or just beating the hell out of 'em.

But that's just me...;)
 
I guess it really just depends on what you want in a knife.

The reason I like Busse knives is due to the edge retention. In a live demonstration a Busse (I believe it was a Basic 7...) cut over 2700 pieces of 1" Hemp rope and still shaved. I just haven't seen any other production or custom knife match this type of performance at an affordable (to me) cost.

I'll probably never chop a cinder brick with any of my knives, or use them to pry open a car door, or anything of the sort. But with my Busse... I know I COULD if I had to.
 
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