Monster,
I concur with those who have said to try handling as many big blades as possible (at a show or shop) to familiarize your hand with the fit of various makers' work. What fits another's hand may be all wrong for the size/shape of your hand or for your purposes. There are blades that will speak sweetly to your hand as soon as you pick them up. Listen to your hand's response to the blade. That's more important than my (or anyone else's) opinion.
Cliff offers good advice about working with cheaper blades before heading out to do more serious damage to your bank account. We all set our own "groove" when working with a blade. Once that is established, it's easier to find a blade to fit the groove than to modify the body's rhythms & responses to fit the blade.
For durability and as a do-it-all blade, I'll add my vote for the Busse models as the best. Very high bang for your buck. A Battle Mistress is about as indestructible a blade as you will find and it can certainly be a prodigious chopper. For about $100 less, the Busse Basic 9 offers pretty much the same steel and a handle I find much more comfortable than the micarta handles of Busse's combat line, even with their ergonomic shape. But I have small hands with short fingers and YMMV.
You can get the Battle Mistress from the Busse website, occasionally in the Individual For Sale forum, or at the shows where Busse reps show up. There are web vendors for the Basic models, as well as the reps at shows.
http://www.onestopknifeshop.com/store/busse.html, boris@bananariveroutfitters.com, phil@2thehilt.com, & drbible@worldnet.att.net are the ones I'm aware of. Busse blades have earned their reputation for sturdiness, edge holding ability, and the devotion of their enthusiastic fans by their performance in the field. Busse's warranty is as bombproof as their blades.
At $150 Newt Livesay's RTAK is hard to beat in its price class. As mentioned earlier, the 3/16" thinner stock, flat ground to the spine, and the rounded nose on the blade makes it somewhat more than strictly a chopper. When chopping, the geometry lends the RTAK to biting in pretty deeply. I trust Jeff Randall's assessment of it for slicing jungle vegetation. My work was in soft wood & blackberry vines (the kudzu of the NW). The handle on the RTAK is very comfortable in my experience, lending itself to hours-long sessions of light chopping, and secure even when wet. Newt's work in 1095 steel is high quality, especially given the prices.
While I have not yet worked with them, the Becker models sure look like they offer a very good performance to price ratio. I'm tempted...
Stay sharp,
Greg
[This message has been edited by RokJok (edited 06-21-2001).]
