Busse vs Mad Dog

Hey, I am not disagreeing with anything Fred or Nemo might have written about a Mad Dog knife. I am just saying, there was some discord between the parties, and that can, and usually does, flavor somebody's opinion. It is inevitable. Especially if you are a firey Frenchman.

Take the issue of the poor chopping: as the edge might come from the maker, it bounces off of a piece of wood. You can report it that way, or report that as soon as you put a finer edge on the blade, it chops fine. Maybe Fred was not allowed to sharpen the knife he borrowed, I don't know. Either way, it comes down to reporting that the knife bounces, or reporting that you can sharpen it, and it chops. The difference might be whether Fred was willing or not to put in some extra effort to give a maker a break after he had an ugly row with him over the availability of a test knife.

The fact is, properly sharpened steel blades don't bounce off of wood, (unless possibly it was a log from a rubber tree?) so my conclusion is that Fred got a knife with an ineffective edge on it, and for whatever reason, may have decided to report that rather than resharpen it and try again. I don't remember the article myself, so I don't know what Fred actually did or said, I am only speculating base on what has been stated second hand in this thread.

I have had to go to the trouble of resharpening several Mad Dog knives myself, and still consider the knives well worth the effort, as I have to do the same to almost every knife I buy.

[This message has been edited by Steve Harvey (edited 03-05-2001).]
 
I didn't want to get involved in this, but....

As i see it, whatever you prefer is the knife for you.... You can buy either one and sell it at a very small loss the next day, so check them both out and decide on one... (or both).

So far i'm impressed with how civil this thread has been compared to previous ones...

James

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The beast we are, lest the beast we become.
 
Concerning Nemo and Fred, at the time they made those comments they were using a Project from Reeves so it was probably the standard the ATAK was being judged against. The Project comes with a very thin edge and a decent forward balance. I have used it and it will chop very well, from memory it can actually compete with the Battle Mistress from Busse Combat (it is not in the same class, but it is not blown away, roughly 50% on small wood). The ATAK on the other hand has a much more neutral balance as well as a much thicker edge and further a more obtuse primary grind. It is of no surprise to me that the penetration would be very low and thus on hard woods could easily bounce out with only a shallow cut. Just depends on the swing and how you follow through. To be specific, if you swing fast with a end cut that is a snap and a loose grip, this is exactly what will happen.

In regards to me, McClung never used the specific argument that I was biased because he would not give me a knife to review (he did make similar comments but he covered a lot of ground in that regard. According to Jim March (he posted this some time ago in the general forum), McClung's reasoning was something like - I wanted to make a name for myself as a knife reviewer so I went looking for someone with a reputation for solid knives, broke them and thus was able to promote myself at their expense. This is actually a pretty decent explanation, and McClung (given his temper) would be the best choice of a maker so as to maximize the amount of publicity.

There are a number of problems with it though, the most glaring though, something McClung has avoided stating, when the first TUSK broke and I discussed it with McClung, Shannon and Stewart, I made it clear that if the break was not caused by a problem with the blade but because what I did was outside the limits of use I did not want a refund ( I would have wanted to know why as it seemed reasonable to me so we would have had to discussed that in some detail). However when the second blade broke the exact same way, and this time even worse (it shattered into pieces), and McClung had made it clear that this was not supposed to happen (we discussed usage after the first one broke) , yes I did ask for a refund on the second one.

Since then, on heavy use blades that are custom in nature I spend a lot of time with a maker discussing usage before I actually cut anything. Some of these are longer conversations that others, the ones with Bill Martio, the Strider guys, Busse Combat, P.J. Turner etc., were all very short for obvious reasons to anyone who has used their blades and dealt with them.

As for all differential blades have the same problems, well all such blades have problems with the tips. They will either be too weak (left low) or too brittle (left high). However they will not all have a tendancy to fail at the edge as McClung's did. This was discussed by a couple of makers in a thread on the general forum when Allen Blade noted the heat treat that McClung used when he worked in the shop.

-Cliff

[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 03-06-2001).]
 
I must say how impressed I am that everyone here I able to keep this discussion in a reasonable and decent tone. Then again, no knife makers are here to rubbish simple questions or have a go at Formites
wink.gif


I am actually enjoying this calm conversation we are all having! Keep up the good work.

W.A


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