Frozen wood vs sarsquatch. The wood won, by a lot

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Regarding damage to modded Busses, I've had an experience as well. I had Horton strip and vex a Skinny ASH for me. I took it up to the Boundary Waters for a week long trip. My buddy and I beat the hell out of it for chopping and batoning wood as well as some food prep. During some of the chopping we ended up chipping out some of the edge. I brought it back and put it through a few sessions of sandpaper of various grits. It is almost back to normal again. I don't have a machine to do this, so by hand takes a bit longer. I am sure Jerry would have put a new edge on it, but I figured this was a good chance to get some more experience sharpening edges. But 230 already has a level of sharpening that I may never achieve. I am sure Busse will make it right if you have trouble fixing up your edge.
 
I think I would let Jerry or Garth ring in and see what they say. :)
 
resinguy said:
No... he is saying that a different knife, with a different edge geometry, had no problems.
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Also absolutely critical: the izula was being batoned, not used to chop with. The sarsquatch wouldn't have sustained that kind of damage if it was batoning. knives of all shapes and brands work wonderfully until you hit their physical limits.

I'm still curious about the hardness of that frozen wood... and I'm really curious about what happens to infi below zero degree's Fahrenheit o_0
 
I hate when that happens 230, thanks for sharing though.

I have done some chopping on a few of our cooler days, -10 F and below with frozen bone and battoning frozen elm and pine logs with my CGFBM with no ill effects what so ever. I do keep the edge on that one pretty close to factory.
 
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Sorry to hear about the bad luck with the sarq. I dont think what you did was abuse, in fact it would seem like normal use and you were trying to test its limits. Some people may have opted for an axe, but given your concerns for wieght, it is not unreasonable to use the knife.

JT
 
The gransfor bruks and wetterling axes I've owned (6 in total) all had edges and geometry that was equivalent to, or noticeably more acute then my factory busse's. Their axes are pretty much knives on a pole... not as much variability in attack angle and applied force, but still...
 
May I say, the Titanium blade does have it's advantages, as a poster noted, like working in the extreme cold without being affected.
 
Helle said:
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I have done some chopping on a few of our cooler days, -10 F and below with frozen bone and battoning frozen elm and pine logs with my CGFBM with no ill effects what so ever. I do keep the edge on that one pretty close to factory.
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I've done brutal things with my CGFBM, NMSFNO and Skinny ASH as far as battoning through gnarly knots and all to no ill effect. Some (most) grinder mods are not an improvement on the original design and are obviously a bad idea. YMMV
 
remmmm said:
Are you saying that the RAT went through the same wood with no problems :eek:
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Nope. It went through thin plywood scraps. I was laughing at myself batoning with a 2 inch blade. The logs would have eaten most any knife, I probably just expected too much.
 
Here is an interesting point. This is prob why Busses are spoken of to be the toughest yet are also talked about as not being the sharpest out of factory. They come out with thicker factory edges because it decreases the chance of them chipping or rolling.

Also, i believe, as a property of metal, the colder it is the more likely it is to snap(correct me if im wrong). Perhaps the combo of your thinner/sharper edge and the constant freezing of the blade was just too much for it, maybe any steel.
 
Cappy2cap said:
Here is an interesting point. This is prob why Busses are spoken of to be the toughest yet are also talked about as not being the sharpest out of factory. They come out with thicker factory edges because it decreases the chance of them chipping or rolling.

Also, i believe, as a property of metal, the colder it is the more likely it is to snap(correct me if im wrong). Perhaps the combo of your thinner/sharper edge and the constant freezing of the blade was just too much for it, maybe any steel.
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I would love to see some destructive tests done in cold weather to show the properties in sub 0 conditions :thumbup:

even cooler would be to cut a single blade into strips to be able to do multiple tests rather then breaking one single blade and calling it a day (a 250-600$ single use test).
 
For the record.

The blade was modified. By modified I mean the decarb was removed, and the dimples were ground out. They were ground off using a 40 grit fresh belt, and cooled each and every time. The blade never even made it into "warm" territory, nevermind into the arena of destroying a temper. It's almost annoying that every time someone uses anything but a ceramic rod to sharpen or reprofile a Busse combat knife the first thought is someone destroyed the heat treat of the blade. It's not easy to do, especially with a sharp lower grit belt, cooling after each pass. I'm not a sharpening expert, nor am I an expert knife maker. I am however an experienced machinist who is part of a continues improvement team at his job who's goal at the moment is to try eliminating burns on whatever work piece the operator is making. We've been plagued by burns, failing acid etches and MPI testing and destroying tempers. Our focus is designing new coolant distribution systems, to keep the work piece from burning as well as educating operators in new grinding methods to avoid glazing over cutting tools during the run with a too fine of a dress, creating friction and developing burns. Of course here we're in the spectrum of using up to 200 lbs of pressure while grinding, not a light touch on a belt sander.

The edge itself was not thinned a great deal, maybe a little bit, but nothing beyond the spectrum of what a high quality cutting tool should be able to withstand. The only real modification to the cutting edge was a high polish to decrease resistance while push cutting. Once again, heat was not an issue, I know.. it's hard to believe, but i'm not a MoMo grinding and heating the knife with a torch after every pass.

Batoning did NOT present a single problem with the knife, even with lateral twisting bypassing knots, and even with frozen wood. The stress points while twisting during batoning are obviously distributed slightly better when the entire blade is being pushed through, instead of just a thin cutting edge like while chopping.

The knife took absolutely no damage when working with non frozen wood, whacking the ice several times as well. When presented with a larger frozen log, the edge would bite into it quite well, but when making angled cuts into the frozen wood, the thinner cutting edge, as oppossed to the rest of the blade simply could not handle the lateral stress. Straight up and down cuts would not have been a problem if I retested it in that manner. I did not even notice the edge damage until I went to resheath the knife. The edge was so badly dented that the knife would no longer slide into the sheath. I took it out and looked at it and was honestly shocked. So shocked I almost gave it a proper burial in one of our fishing holes, I guess I disappoint easily.

Looking further at the edge, although the blade was dented like a soft machete would end up after eating some hard wood, it was also chipped out very badly, to the point of being serrated. It looked like it bit into the wood, bent and tore out. I was honestly somewhat surprised. Also, despite what many people believe, bending the edge and straightening it again on a steel WILL weaken the edge at the bending point, maybe not enough to cause immediate failure, but this has just been my experience.

I'm not blaming Busse Combat, I think I probably just expected too much out of it. For those of you saying I should have brought an axe, maybe next trip you'll be willing to carry it for me. I buy BC knives so I won't have to carry an axe.

For those of you saying that the stock edge should be sufficient, that's ridiculous. Sure the stock edge geometry on a lot of BC knives are thick to prevent damage, but if I wanted just indestructibility in a cutting tool I would grind a cutting edge on a 2/3 inch piece of bar stock and never worry about a thing. For a knife like the sarsquatch, a thin edge is a MUST. This knife does not have the weight of a bigger blade, so to properly chop into things, the geometry needs to be somewhat acute, sorry but that's just a fact. You're not going to get very far with a light weight knife with the same edge geometry as a MOAB. The reason some of the big choppers chop so well is weight, smaller knives need to depend on other attributes.

As to whether or not the ice had anything to do with it, I can't really speak on. It very well could have as every fish we pulled would stop moving almost instantly when pulled from the water as they would freeze from the wind. The knife was constantly wet and did have ice on it at many times during it's use.

Oh well.
 
Good luck in getting it fixed... are you going to try sharpening it out yourself, or are you going to try to get in touch with Busse?
 
Well...I have to be honest about this one...kinda perplexed

I am not Jerry or Garth however I suggest this...

230grains,

Send it to us at the shop we will take a look at it and do our best to help you out:):)


I really think that everyone need's to calm down:):)

Just my 2 cents

Amy-0
 
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Now, see what happens when you guys use your knives? You should take Bravado's advice and leave them in the safe where they belong!!!
:eek:

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Interesting. In Texas, we don't get much frozen wood to chop on... well, not THAT frozen anyway. So I can't speak much on that. I can only surmise that it would be pretty darn hard. Still... I don't think anyone could question that chopping on wood... even frozen is abuse. 230 certainly didn't do anything 'wrong'.

I can say that I bbq just about every weekend using my INFI to baton the wood. The woods I use to BBQ are generally either Mesquite or Pecan. Both are very hard woods.

What is interesting to me is that the NMSFNO has split tons of wood and always retains an excellent edge (amazing really), as do my other Busse's. The notable exception is the SARSQUATCH. It does fine, no edge damage whatsover, but does not hold as fine of an edge as the others. It dulls easier/faster. (same edge geometry on all of my users... all convex and very sharp).

In reading this thread, it made me wonder if the Squatch has the same rockwell hardness as other INFI. Maybe the boss-man could do some testing if 230 sends it back in.

Just a thought, but I'd begin the investigation by checking the rockwell... :)
 
For the record, here it is when I got home and straightened it out some on a steel before sharpening out any chips.

sarchip.jpg


Honestly, i'd probably send it in just because i'm busy at work this week and busy this weekend and really don't even want to deal with fixing it, but I'm not going to risk wasting my time and having it be sent back. If this was an rc 6 or something i'd send it back without worrying about sharpening voiding the warranty, but really, I don't have the best luck with the postal service, nor sarsquatches. I don't expect BC to fix it, since i "modded" it. I'll put a good 90 degree edge on it and shine it up real nice. I'll just bring a cheap machete next time, as i'll never be happy with stock edges, so i'll continue to void my warranties.

Edit - That probably came off as rude, my apologies, i've only slept an hour and have a splitting headache.
 
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