jerry initially tried to do a cheaper economy line that was comparable to infi with the basics. they were popular and performed excellently, but the cost became prohibitive as the cost of m-infi went up.
Jerry's wife Jennifer took up the torch of a high performance economy line with swamp rat. The initial offerings from swamp rat were in the 100$ range using resiprene-c handles and sr101, a modified version of 52100. Swamp rat itself is not run by busse combat. They (to my knowledge) use the same facility during the night shift when it is economical to do so. In the past few years they have become a semi-economy line to busse switching to exposed tang micarta slabbed handles, existing in the 200$ range. While swamp rat has used other steels such as d2, 154cm, and s30v and sr77 (modified s7), their core steel continues to be sr101. Jerry has a huge stock pile of other steels from when he was using them as a knife maker pre-infi, and whenever he sells some of the stock it occasionally ends up in the hands of swamp rat or scrap yard.
jerry's brother then took up the torch of the ultra economy line with scrap yard, using resiprene-c and sr77, a modified version of s7. sr77 is considerably cheaper as a base steel then infi or sr101, and one of the main principles of the company is to get whatever large-quantity scrap they can from jerry or anywhere else in order to keep the cost of the knives down, without sacrificing performance. To my knowledge they do not use the same facility or machines, and are run as a completely separate company with their own time schedule. They are not run by busse combat.
Even though each company is run by a member of the busse family, they are separate businesses and entities. It's my understanding that each company has access to jerry as a source of knowledge regarding heat treat and metallurgy, but they are not run by jerry in any way.
