Speaking on behalf of someone who was ACTUALLY THERE at the time that Noss started hosting his site (and ever since then), the reason he went on to test the Busse is because he had an enormous amount of requests to do so...for an entire year!! He was constantly getting asked, "when you gonna test a Battle Mistress, Noss?" When he finally received his Battle Mistress, he took it out into the national forest and used it. He found it to be an awesome knife. Because he had used it to chop firewood all night, though, the knife was no longer "right out of the box", so he ordered another one to conduct the test with...also, he wanted to keep one to use because he goes camping overnight at least once or twice a month. The only difference at the time was that he had a combat grade battle mistress, but wanted to test and see what the thicker, "fat" Battle Mistress could do.
Now, I got a chance to hold the ffbm before the test, and to those who haven't actually held a Busse before, you really get a respect for it when you actually wield that enormous piece of steel. You feel like, if given the time, you could chop through a freekin dump truck with it.
There was a point during the test where Noss had it in the vice an inch above the tang and was swinging the 3lb mallet into the handle like Barry Bonds and I swear, i felt that if I could filter out the sounds of Noss huffing and puffing like a bull and the clang of the impacts, I would hear the damn thing laughing at him. Like after ten rounds with Muhhamed Ali, he leaned into George Foreman and said, "come on, George, is that all ya got?" Even after all the abuse that the knife had endured, all you had to do was sharpen a new edge on it and you could take it out and chop firewood all night without any apprehensions as to whether or not it could handle the job. After he pounded that knife through the metal piping the first time, I seriously doubted if he could test the knife to failure. (Noss and I had that same feeling when testing the Strider as well)
Noss likes his big fixed blades because that what he takes on his camping trips. So, if it seems like all he does is give credit to the Busse, it is because out of all the knives he has tested, it is the Battle Mistress that he chooses to use, regularly. And, as far as Noss testing the knife outside its "perameters", when Noss contacted Jerry Busse and told him that he was gonna be subjecting the knife to an intense regiment, what do you think was Busse's response? What were his exact words?...let me think...oh yeah, now I remember--he told Noss to "beat the sh@t out of it!"
And, one more tidbit for the conspiracy theorists: the temperature outside was about 76 degrees farenheit when he tested the Green Beret. It was FREEZING outside when he tested the Busse. How do I know? When we got out of the unairconditioned and unheated shop where he conducts the tests, Noss' huge dog bowls were almost completely frozen over. However, if you watch the Busse FFBM destruction test, does the knife seem at all affected by the low temperature?...yet another reason why Noss loves his Battle Mistess.
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