Mostly not to me......................... None of the big ones are. I don't have a use for huge knives whether it is an Ontario RTAK, Junglas, Vakra, Deep Woods Bowie, or Busse BlahMistress, BK9, whatever. Agricultural tools, machetes, goloks, and especially billhooks work great. I don't even need to trip on the Busse marketing here, I can just as easily use something else as an example. Take a Junlgas shape and make it from whatever you like, 3V, S7, 420, A2, .etc, nothing changes, the billhook is still a better shape. Make that Junglas out of INFI and still nothing changes. In short, things that owe their existence to a legacy from the old “one shot” days of yesteryear in my opinion tend to be excellent at nothing. Too lumpen for butchering compared to butcher knives, hopeless as machetes, and I'm going to avoid a prac tac comment on their usefulness as weapons. In short, look at at the tools professionals use to process green wood or meat and see if any of them are remotely similar to these big ole bowies and mistresses. You could make a Citroën 2CV from carbon fiber. Somebody somewhere would take pride in owning one I'm sure. Mostly though we'd still all know it was a rubbish shaped object, and that's the elephant in the room...................................I think there's more hope for the smaller ones. The interesting thing to me is that they aren't at all what springs to mind when when thinks of Busse. For example the little Elmax jobs on a rubber handle strike me as pretty attractive users. The Weiner Dog in 154 CM with the Mudder grips or Mud Puppy LE look handy. I can think of a few more too in that thread. I don't see what they would offer over my old Linder Super Edge in ATS 34 that would be massively obvious during use, well mebe the Elmax, they are just different shapes. And therein lay a thing for me; one a certain level of materials performance is reached I am much more concerned about the shape of the brute than from what it is made. I moved on a Fällkniven F1 to go back to my Boker in 440C that costs half as much for that very reason. The Fällkniven steel is superior, no doubt about it. I interact better with the Boker that can out cut it all day long in real world circumstances. If I were looking to replace it with a Busse I'd be holding “shape” as a priority not from what it was made............................... I don't believe I'm alone in that either. Check out a lot of the blades people are using on this forum. Many of them don't have anything like the wear resistance of modern steels but lots of people prefer to use old stuff that is a couple of bux a foot because they can have cheap knives knocked up in them that fit their shape needs ideally. Given that we are all on this forum it's probably worth a bet that most of us know that D2 will hold an edge way longer than simple carbons at non-impact tasks, yet still people are tending to the simple carbons as it comes in shapes that work for them, even when impact toughness is irrelevant. You can buy something cheap from China that will resist wear far better and wont rust but they're still cutting down Old Hickories and thinning out Condors. Sure I have a pet theory about the attractiveness of simple carbons being a lot to do with personalization and unique corrosion patterns that make “a knife” “my knife”. It's the mummy sewed my my tag in it that is so common to many things that people like to possess. But beyond all the “I stuck my blade in a condom with some gun-blu, bleach, and what I could squeeze out of my King Edwards patina brigade I think most of that is just about availability of shapes. Once you've achieved at least a baseline materials standard that the most important thing and users know it. On the whole it has tended to make this section of the forum remarkably resistant to Busse marketing.............................. There's another aspect that doesn't sit well with me too, and that's the “bragging rights”, “if you can afford the best”, and all that old pony. I'm probably in the minority here but I don't equate best with cost. I know why I'm allergic to that mentality, the father was full of it. Throw money at stuff, believe you've got the best, lock into a way of buying esteem and hope to elevate your status by dint of possessions. Pride in ownership pfut! One hears dodgy suff all the time such as “a Ferrari and a Honda will both get you from place to place but you'd want the Honda if you could afford it wouldn't you?”. More BS. I don't have to travel that far at all to find Landrovers on every drive in an urban close. They're all at it, keeping up with the Joneses and making sure they public displays of affluence don't fall down the scale. They use them to drive the kids to school and nip to Waitrose. W00T! They are disparagingly known as Chelsea Tractors. When challenged those folks will often list off all the things their vehicle can do that has zero bearing on what they actually use if for and here I find a parallel with the mantra of INFI INFI INFI. So what that you can thrown it at a wall, or chop chain, or jump about on one you stuck in a tree, really. As far as knife use goes that has nothing to do with anything. See the thread on this forum about “knives you have broken” or some such. There was a glaring paucity of knives that people broke doing genuine knife tasks. In fact, most people have the good sense to say “I was doing something dipshit with it and I broke it”. Often the counter argument is “but if you had a BLAHPICKLEMASTER it wouldn't have broke”, and what? The best tool to pop down the village to buy tobacco could be a bicycle or a skateboard. Damned if I'd want to do that in a Hummer in case I ran over an unexploded WW2 mine, I'd be loading up on the improbable at a cost to what is optimal..................... I think in short there probably are a few really neat small ones that work well. I don't see them as anything special compared with a lot of other great small users out there. If one fits the style of use then great shortlist it. Others I could well live without and have no home for all the hype. If I were a collector not a user a might think differently, some of that holding the value thing might be a factor, but mebe not. If I were a collector I would collect customs and I find nothing custom about who actually makes Busses or their customizing shop. As Les Robertson [who deals with a hell of a lot of high end custom pieces] said; “His true marketing genius...getting people to buy all those knives with no sheath. Apparently PT Barnum was correct”. Each to their own, innit.
