Chad_Engelhardt
Posts: 2428
Reg: 11/30/99
08/26/02 11:13 PM - Post#186023
Among knife nuts, both Chris Reeve and Jerry Busse have a loyal following, and for good reason. Both make high quality knives with extreme performance in mind.
The two knives reviewed here are both very large, the CRK has a nine inch hollow ground blade of A2 Air Hardening tool steel at 55-57 RC, grond from quarter inch stock.
The Battle Mistress is an older (and highly sought after) straight handle model. It boasts a blade almost ten inches long and almost 5/16" thick. It is made of Busse proprietary steel INFI, and is hardend to 60RC. There is a ton of information available on the web about this amazing steel, what makes it special is that it can be hard for strength, yet still be very tough. It has very high levels of wear resistance (maybe from the Ti and cobalt in its alloy) and the Busse heat treat is specialized for this steel.
The CRK is a one-piece design, with it handle being milled from the same block of steel as the blade. This has the advantage of being very strong and offering a hollow handle, if you require that feature.
Sheaths:
The CRK came with a high quality Gfeller sheath, as well as the eagle kydex and nylon sheath pictured. The Gfeller sheath is typical CRK quality, I have written that the Gfeller sheaths are the best that any knife maker provides with their knife. They are of a quality comparable to custom sheath master Kenny Rowe (though Rowe may have a slight hair of a lead).
The Eagle Brand sheath is also nice if you like that sort of thing, it has a utility pouch and many lashing points.
The Busse sheath sucked. That is blunt, but accurate. The sheath is of kydex with a belt loop of nylon. It does not carry well on the belt, and the kydex sheath does not hold the blade very securely. In the past I have noted the poor quality of Busse sheaths, and this one fits that category as well. For a high quality sheath in concealex, either Eric from ON Scene/ Tactical or David Brown of Buy Brown make excellent products, far superior to the sub-par sheath that Busse provides.
Utility Work:
The CRK pulled strongly ahead cutting nylon rope, cardboard and carpet.
A quick check of the edges told the story. The CRK edge is very acute for a knife this size, it is a symetrical convex edge with an angle of under 25 degrees included, the metal behind the edge is quite thin, a result of the deep hollow grind.
The edge on the Busse was very overbuilt. It is Asymeterical ( a design which I dislike), with one side being at 20 degrees and the other side at over 30 degrees. THis yields a total edge angle of over 50 degrees, far too obtuse for high performance. Having an edge this obtuse defeats the advantage of having a "super-steel".
For kitchen work, the CRK worked quite well, behaving much like a large kitchen knife. It sliced tomatoes paper thin, went right through carrots and celery and cut meat like a demon.
The Busse did not fair as well, it is somewhat more clumsy, because of its greater mass, but the thicker edge put it at a huge disadvantage.
Wood Work
I used both knives to sharpen rough points on wooden stakes to be used for tobbacco housing. These stakes are shoved through the stalk of the plant, it is then allowed to hang and cure. These stakes are generations old, and very well seasoned. How many stakes did I sharpen? A lot. We hung several tons of tobbacco, filling two barns. Not all of the stakes need sharpening, but many did. I would estimate that I went through a couple hundred over a three day period.
Strangely, the CRK did not work well at all on this type of work, whcih really suprised me. Given its acute edge profile, it should have done quite well. On average it took 24 cuts to form a rough point, which is not a high level of performance at all.
The Battle Mistress was slightly better, averaging 18 cuts to form a rough point.
Given the thick edge profile, I was suprised to see it outperform the CRK here.
For comparison, a Spyderco Endura averaged about 18 cuts, the two best tools that I had for this work were a GB Small Forest Axe, which averaged 6 cuts and a Busse BAIII (Blademan Custom) which averaged 8 cuts.
Both the CRK and BM have large choils which allow ou to choke up for fine work. The Busse was much better in this regard, as the choil has a finger groove cut in, and the the spine is flat.
The top guard of the CRK poked into my hand when I choked up, making it less comfortable.
Chopping:
The primary reason many people choose to carry a big knife in the woods is its chopping power. While I personally feel that a big knife makes a poor substitute for an axe, there are those who prefer the big knife.
In chopping the BM easily overshadowed the CRK. Even with a thick edge, the BM offered a much higher level of performance.
The mass and full flat grind allowed the BM to have excellent penetration, chopping through 2" poles in just a couple strokes. THe handle feel was quite good, though my pinky did get smashed during larger chopping jobs. Aubrey Moore (who I have not seen around in a long while) used to call this Busse pinky. (though FWIW the Rinaldi Armageddon that Aubrey sold me gave me the worst case of "Busse Pinky" ever )
The BM was easily able to pry apart wood, the steel, being thick and hard, is very strong, even with my 250 lbs pulling on it full force it did not bend a bit.
The CRK was not at all suited for chopping. It worked fine for limbing very small branches, but anything over an inch or two, and the flaw in the handle design becomes very obvious.
The handle is knurled metal, it is like holding a file while chopping. It will turn bare flesh into handburgers. Because the handle was so rough, I had to sue a very light grip, which allowed the knife to roll during chopping. The results were pretty poor, the handle design did not allow me to take advantage of the performance that the acute edge profile should have offered.
Coating
The CRK Kalguard held up very well, though it did show wear, it did so slowly and evenly.
The Busse coating performed poorly, which was a suprise. This is the old smooth coat, the same as I have used on a number of other Busse knives. My #7 for example, had this coating, and though it wore off eventually, the knife has been through hell and back. The coating on the BM looked worse after an afternoon in the woods.
Busse has gone to the new crinkle coat finish which is very tough stuff.
In general, I do not prefer coated blades anyways.
Corrosion Resistance
Suprisingly the INFI showed some discoloration on the edge, where the CRK A2 did not show any spots at all. This is suprising, because in the past I have found INFI to be very resistamt to rust, and A2 is a tool steel with a minimal amount of Chromium (like 5% IIRC), so the INFI should have performed better.
I tried to show the discoloration, but it was very light. In any event, it wiped off with a simple stropping.
The Winner
If I had to choose one, it would be the Busse, the handle comfort and subsequent chopping ability was just much higher.
I also think the BM will offer a much higher level of performance when the edge is thinned out properly. I will contact Busse shortly about sending the knife in to have a suitable edge applied, I am thinking convex symeterical at 25 degrees included would improve the performance, especiall at fine tasks by many to one.
I will be doing some more work with the CRK, with the simple addition of a heavy pair of work gloves, to see how much that will effect the performance.
As a side note, a simple GB axe, either the Scandanavian or Small Forest axe would outperform either of these two knives for a fraction of the price.
Any comment would be greatly appreciated.
Take care,
Chad
not too hard to see why we like them!
Not that I've never done that sort of thing, but never with someone elses new toy without their permission. Glad you like it though 