As someone who uses Darrin's heat treat service, I would be interested to see how one of my blades with Darrin's heat treat would hold up, if I thought that I would get useful information on how to improve my own designs and quality, or Darrin's heat treat for that matter. But, I don't drink the Noss Kool-aid. I've never seen one of his tests that makes me feel like the guy understands anything about knives. All he does is abuse them.
I think this misses several points in Noss's favour:
- Perhaps most importantly,
destruction testing tests what will happen to a knife in an accident. If I paid $500 for a 11 inch bowie, then I'd damn well want to know that the tip won't shatter if I make a mistake while chopping and the tip smashes into a rock deposit full of quartz. I've never had to cut through a car door, but I have had to clear ground that hid rocks and scrap steel in the path of the blade, and to baton cut through wood that contained hidden nails. In fact, anyone who buys a large knife and puts it to enough use to really justify even $25, let alone, $500, will probably face these hazards. And Noss's tests are excellent for detecting what will happen in these circumstances.
- If you're paying for an expensive knife on the grounds of extra toughness, then you should damn well get it! I can get a 4" Mora for $40, a 9" MTECH Bowie for $30, a 14" Marbles Bolo for $20 - and they are all excellent cutters. If someone wants me to pay $500 for a 9" Bowie because it is tougher, then I don't think that is unreasonable to expect their knife to do better at Noss's tests.
- Knife makers aren't forthcoming about the limits of their products: you reasonably should know what these are, and that does mean testing to destruction. Often this information is useful because it is reassuring - eg Mora knives are more than reasonably strong for their thickness, despite the Mall Ninja battlecry of "Must have a full tang!"
- Testing for "abuse" can sometimes indicate a reassuring safety margin.
- Some of Noss's tests that look silly are actually good indicators of repeated performance. For example, chopping through a concrete block or sheet steel simulates that chopping accident I refered to, repeated multiple times. If you're really going to use a Busse Battle Mistress ebough to justify the cost then it is going to see years of chopping, meaning repeated smashing into hidden stone, concrete, and steel scrap - unless you are chopping somewhere pretty idyllic.
- Some knives have no sensible rationale except the ability to do well at such tests - for example very thick but short knives like the BK2. (Which as I remember d-testing revealed to have a less than great terrific resistance to edge chipping..) But if you're going to judge intelligently whether or not these knives are worth buying you also need to know how tough other knives are - because that $15 Mora Clipper might well do everything that you think you need the BK2 for.
To each his own I guess, but I don't get the point. 
