drawing the line

williamsld8

williamsld8

Joined
Sep 19, 2010
Messages
226
Alright well I have searched many times for a solution to this question and haven't found anything, so forgive me if this has been taken care of before. Also, I figured this forum is the best place to post this. I am curious where to line gets drawn between production knives and custom knives. I always held the idea that production knives were available in stores and on major commercial sites ( such as bass pro shop, and knifecenter.com, and what not ) and then there were the semi-production knives, which i have only ever really heard CRK and ZT referred to as semi production, both of which are available on knifecenter.com. Now I have noticed that TONS of people on here and other forums and sites have a large collection of Busse knives, and also a number of Swamprat and Scrapyard knives, as well as Bark River. I have heard Busse and Bark river both referred to as Semi production, yet other than limited pickings from their websites, have found that I cannot find them, and have gotten a custom knife vibe from that experience. Can anybody shed some light on this? Thank you.
 
They are what I would refer to the Busse line as is limited production and custom as they make limited production knives and they have a custom shop that makes tru one off custom knives.
 
I can't speak for the other companies, but busse combat is a company that produces short term unlimited number production runs. Each knife is kept on the website for a limited amount of time (sometimes as little as three weeks, others as long as 5 months), during which the general public can order as many knives as they'd like. If there are 160,000 boss jacks ordered or if 10,000 are ordered, the production run ends when the knife is taken off the website. After that the only knives that come out are from limited customized runs for shows, 'special editions' of a limited number (generally for shows) or as military overruns. The one exception is when there is a short bladeforums/home forum run like the basic 10 where it is produced to a limited number, once reached it's taken down.

It's been a while since I've looked into the current swamp rat and scrap yard set ups, so someone else can fill those in.
 
Last edited:
williamsld8 said:
Alright well I have searched many times for a solution to this question and haven't found anything, so forgive me if this has been taken care of before. Also, I figured this forum is the best place to post this. I am curious where to line gets drawn between production knives and custom knives. I always held the idea that production knives were available in stores and on major commercial sites ( such as bass pro shop, and knifecenter.com, and what not ) and then there were the semi-production knives, which i have only ever really heard CRK and ZT referred to as semi production, both of which are available on knifecenter.com. Now I have noticed that TONS of people on here and other forums and sites have a large collection of Busse knives, and also a number of Swamprat and Scrapyard knives, as well as Bark River. I have heard Busse and Bark river both referred to as Semi production, yet other than limited pickings from their websites, have found that I cannot find them, and have gotten a custom knife vibe from that experience. Can anybody shed some light on this? Thank you.
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Are you looking for a knife? This might be better in general
 
no im not looking for a knife, looking for knowledge. wanting to know the difference between custom, production and semi production. and busse knives seem to be as plentiful and popular as productions, but as hard for me to track down as customs. (at least when it comes to specific models) so i figured the busse community might be a good place to start asking.
 
I consider Jerry Busse and Rick Hinderer to be semi-custom knife makers because they use advanced machinery (like CNC) and multiple employees to increase production run numbers/availability of their knives. If they didn't, it would be like getting a Randle Made Knife and the wait would be years. Both do custom, handmade knives still and they demand the premium that they deserve. The difference is Rick lets you know if he did it by hand while with Jerry it could be him or Garth (or I assume one of the other guys) under the Busse Custom Shop moniker.
 
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