Busse Tank Buster Video review in HD.

[Ankerson]

Short video of the Tank Buster that I made. :thumbup:

Best viewed on Youtube.

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[theonew]

Thanks for the video :thumbup:

I have to say though that 20 chops to get through a branch that thick is rather underwhelming performance even for a medium sized knife. While it looks like it's pretty sharp, I would seriously consider thinning that edge quite a bit. Start with 10 degrees per side and thicken it up in small increments if the edge deforms.

My 3/16ths thick Ranger RD7 went from being a lousy chopper with it's factory edge angle (20+ degrees per side) to a fast, deep-biting chopper with an edge of 10 degrees per side. I've beaten the crap out of that blade, chopping and batoning wood and bone and never had the slightest problem other than basic dulling.

 

[230grains]

As much as I love INFI, it doesn't like 10 degrees very much for super heavy use. It'll chop fine with it without deforming, but if you start to get into frozen wood or very heavy knots, bad things can happen.

I thinned the edge out heavily experimenting to see the limits I could take INFI. I ended up folding the heck out the edge on a comp finish sarsquatch chopping some very dense frozen solid wood. A few degrees thicker fixes that problem however. It's kind of odd, at 20 and 15 degrees INFI takes more abuse than any steel i've ever used. I've hit concrete accidentally, rocks, cut through other knives. I used a thinned out nuclear meltdown fusion battle mistress to get rid of some HEAVY ice on my back porch steps. I chopped clean through the ice, busted it all up and accidentally took a huge chunk out of the concrete. I didn't even get a roll, just a slight blunting of a tiny portion of the edge that steeled right out without losing any metal. Bring that same edge down to 10 degrees and I think I would have seen some major warping. 10 degrees will hold up to normal use, even chopping, but be careful what you're chopping.

 

[Ankerson]

Thanks for the video :thumbup:

I have to say though that 20 chops to get through a branch that thick is rather underwhelming performance even for a medium sized knife. While it looks like it's pretty sharp, I would seriously consider thinning that edge quite a bit. Start with 10 degrees per side and thicken it up in small increments if the edge deforms.

My 3/16ths thick Ranger RD7 went from being a lousy chopper with it's factory edge angle (20+ degrees per side) to a fast, deep-biting chopper with an edge of 10 degrees per side. I've beaten the crap out of that blade, chopping and batoning wood and bone and never had the slightest problem other than basic dulling.

I wasn't chopping that hard, my leg was right there you know.

 

[t1mpani]

As far as geometry is concerned, you can still improve cutting performance dramatically just by relieving the shoulder a bit--raising the edge bevel higher and having it convex into the primary cutting edge. Think of it as putting a micro-bevel on in reverse. This leaves it very sturdy down at the business end of things while making the transition into the rest of the blade much more fluid. Many cutting competition knives have actual edge angles around 40 degrees included, but are ground down to being very thin at the edge shoulder. I'm not saying that Busse knives should be ground in the same way, merely that the geometry of the blade itself affects cutting ability just like the geometry of the edge. My old Swamp Rat Camp Tramp just sails down deep into hardwood--it just took a little tweaking.

But yes, the position assumed by the OP during the demonstration does tend--very rightly--towards a certain conservativism in how hard you swing.