Battle Mistress breakage?

Cpl Punishment

Cpl Punishment

Joined
Jan 28, 2006
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Just wondering: How often has there been breakage of any of the Battle Mistress models from "regular use"?

"Regular use" meaning just about anything except intentional destruction testing.

I've been reading a lot lately of other brand's "big bruiser" knives breaking -- some after years of use, but don't recall hearing of any BMs that failed except in intentional destruction tests. Makes me feela a lot better about trusting it.
 
I seriously doubt you could break a BM unintentionally. and if you did break it I am sure that Jerry would replace it!!
 
I couldn't break mine but I made it ugly. It needs to go to the Busse Spa and get the edge properly cleaned up.
 
Guyon said:
I don't even think Cliff could break his.
Click to expand...

cliff didn't exactly go all out with his. he did with is basic 7, wich broke. but his basic 7 didn't look very much like a normal basic 7 at the end, it was considerably smaller and thinner.

there are 2 ways that you could potentially break a battle mistress through "normal" use, normal being in busse terms.

1: if you chopped roots as your primary function. chopping and digging roots is about as harsh on a blade as you can get, your slamming the edge into dirt and rocks every time you use it. after a few years of smashing it on rocks you'd induce some metal fatigue and stress, and you might have an edge blow out. BUT, you could reduce this by sending it in every 2 years for stress releaving (a kind of heat treatment).

2: if you did demolition work as your primary function. if your main use for the knife is prying apart boards and structures, you could do the same as above, or straight up break it by bending it to far.


these are both pretty extreme cases though, as a knife isn't really a shovel or a prybar. but in busse terms if you reeeally wanted to use it as either, you could get away with it for quite some time before major problems arose.
 
I broke a FFBM. Sorry, no pix. What happened was I was in an undisclosed enemy location in my tank. Turns out, I'm racing out of there for my life. All of a sudden, I discover there's a cliff in front of me. I'm fudged. Nowhere to go.

So I climbed out of my tank, carefully lowered myself about 30' down the cliff and dug my FFBM into the side of the rock. One chop and it held fast. I then tied a loop in some braided steel cable on the back of my tank and drove that bad boy right over the edge of the cliff. As expected, the steel braid loop caught the FFBM and the tank held until the enemy defenders had left. They musta been somethin confused to see tracks and no more tank. LOL

Honestly, I could have stayed there for decades, but I had to get back to the rendezvous point. I figured with the right feathering of the treads, I could make it the rest of the way down the cliff, but how to remove the FFBM from the wall? (FWIW, I'm a really really good tank driver. Something none of you knew about me.)

Sadly, I didn't think to pull the pin from the clovis hitch. Instead, I turned the turret to vertical and shot at the braid to jar it loose. Hit the FFBM instead. Snapped that bad boy right in two. No. Not the FFBM - the shell. It just shredded it.

Just then, the rock wall gave way and I fell the remainder of the way down the cliff. My feathering technique worked. (See, I told you I'm that good.) Found the FFBM on the ravine floor. Snapped 1/4" off the tip. Boy am I pissed. I gotta send it to Jerry for replacement.
 
Try "never". Never has happened, never will happen. A Battle Mistress is as close to "indestructible" as you are gonna get.

And if you do somehow manage to break one, it will be replaced. :thumbup:
So have at it! Balls to the wall!
 
I use CGFBM the break apart palats all the time. Its probably gone through several hundred plus palats in the last year not to mention the tree's its gone through, the stump roots I have chopped up. The Old barn siding that I used it to tear apart. Wood chopping both splitting and quartering. I have done monstrous amounts of work with it and its been fine. The edge actually got better after I took that little half mm or so of steel from the edge and seems harder?

I havent broke it yet and probably never will. If anything I'd tear a chunk out of it I'd say before I'd break it.

Now the FFBM thats a pansy knife that couldnt stand up to crap;). Hahaha I have used the heck out of that too and its a brute. The only BM that hasnt seen a ton of work yet is my NMFBM as I have mostly done blow down clearing and mild amounts of wood splitting for fires.
 
I couldn't see breaking a FBM through normal use. I couldn't even see breaking it with extreme use, they are built like tanks.
 
worth posting:

http://knifetests.com/BussefFFBMtestpage.html


what you are most likely to see is like the sjtac that was posted a while ago where the handle had broken off at the first tube fastener. the tube fasteners are good, but if you slam a log on top of them you'll cause sheering after a while. as for real blade breakage, it does happen from time to time, but not normally on the larger blades. most of the large busse's have extra thick tips for this purpose, and as I sad before, you'd have to make severe abuse your primary use for the knife to be in any real danger.
 
I'm Trying :)

IMG_2730.jpg
 
I beat my SHBM 1/100 through (NOT splitting it) a 6x6 treated timber with a 20oz framing hammer a while back. Dented up the spine but it's still going strong. It was on my LBV for a few years when I was a grunt and chopped plenty of roots etc and it had no problems.
Just my .02

Bob Mills
 
I chipped my NMFBMLE: I slammed it right into a rock. Its a small chip, maybe the size of a pebble if even. Amy offerred to have it reground (for free), but I have some more chopping for it, so I figure I'll wait till it really really needs some TLC to send it back in.

It did save Christmas in the process of it getting chipped.
 
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