- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
- Messages
- 9,786
This one probably qualifies for the 'your ugliest knife thread' popular in W&SS right now 
Seeing how I just opened my new SOD from the mail, I won't relegate it there just yet. Yes a big chopper knife was purchased! Somewhere in late Nov. the SHTF thing must have popped in my head. Spurred on by the marketing methods of the Bussekin, I immediately followed the impulse to buy with the short lived availability of the Scrapyard Son of Dog (SOD). It turns out I had ordered just in the nick of time!
My knife just came in today. I'd like to make a quick statement about dealing with scrapyard as this was the subject of a rather lengthy and hijacked thread in the general knife discussion area last week.
When I decided to order the SOD, it was kind of a lark that I had checked the scrapyard website and a knife was actually available. I don't check the busse stores all that frequently, but every once in a while I will see what might be available. The odds of my just so happening to click on the scrapyard knives store at the time the SOD was available was kind of lucky given I hadn't heard of the model before seeing it there. Basically, how it works over there is the online store make knives available (usually a new model) as pre-orders in bursts and when some internal number of orders has been filled the company stops taking orders and over the next subsequent weeks ships out its knives to those who purchased them. There can be long periods between knife model offerings, where the store is referred to being 'dark', i.e. no knives for sale. An interesting aspect of this marketing scheme is that a particular model is released in batches and the total number of knives are controlled. It is also stated that the same knife model is never re-released over a minimum time span of 2 years and in some cases a given model, such as limited additions, may never be released again.
Therefore, if you see a knife that you like and it happens to be available at the scrapyard store, then you should scoop it up. Otherwise you will have to pay secondary market fees (usually marked up by about 30% or more from the direct purchase price) or you may not even be able to track the model you want down. In my case, I happened to click on the webpage, learned about the knife from the description, saw that it was available in the 'place orders' section and I purchased it by credit card. Everything else went pretty smooth. They don't charge your credit card until the knife is actually shipped. I actually made a mistake in the expiry data of my CC on my order. Renee contacted me by e-mail on Dec. 28. I didn't check my e-mail until Jan 5, in which case I replied back to her with the correct information. I pretty much figured that they would have cancelled my order by that time and would not have blamed the store had they done so. However, Renee was vary accomodating, got me set up and the knife was shipped out on the 6th. I received it today, even with a border stop to Canada. (Customs dinged me the GST tax and processing fees - well you win some and lose some
) All told, I was very happy with the ordering process and it seems that Scrapyard went out of its way to ensure my knife came to me.
Okay to the review!!
I did get a chance earlier to handle the SOD last weekend as Cmdr249 brought his SOD along at our little get together in Ohio. However, I was so pre-occupied with all the knives he brought that day that I didn't pay too much attention to this one. For comparison, I am contrasting the SOD against the Rat Cutlery RC-6, another mid-size blade that many readers here are familiar with.
Specs at a glance:
SOD
Overall Length: 12.5"
Blade Length: 7.5"; Actual Edge Length: 6"; Blade Width 1.75"
Blade Thickness: 0.25" (not spec'd by me)
Blade Steel: SR77
Handle length: 5"; Handle Material: Resiprene C;
Knife Weight: 15.30 oz
Stated Warranty: No Questions Asked
RC-6
Overall Length: 11.75"
Blade Length: 6.5"; Actual Edge Length: 5.75"; Blade width: 1.5"
Blade Thickness: 0.188" (not spec'd by me)
Blade Steel: 1095
Handle length: 5" + small amount of protruding tang; Handle Material: Mircata
Knife Weight: 11.85 oz
Stated Warranty: No Questions Asked
Here are a comparison of shots between the RC-6 and SOD. I think these pictures provide some surprises about real world dimensions. The first shot shows the RC-6 and SOD in profile comparison. You can see that the SOD is larger knife all dimensions. It just looks huge compared to the RC-6.
Yet a lot of the blade real estate taken up by the 7.5" SOD is in fact part of the choil and a small extention of the index finger guard arises out of the handle as coated metal. As you can see from the specs, the actual edge length of the SOD is in fact only 0.25" longer then the RC-6. The RC-6 also has a choil, but it is smaller and the finger guard is fully integrated with the handle. The next shot shows the RC-6 lying on top of the SOD. The back edges of the two blades are lined up. This shows you how similar the actual edge length is. It also gives a perspective of the width differences between the two blades.
Now the profile comparison. In this case, I've lined up the front of the handles of the two knives together. You can see in this shot just how thick the blade of the SOD is relative to the RC-6. Here is where all that weight difference come in.
Comparing the handle dimensions, you can see that the SOD and RC-6 are very similar in overall length and thickness. The SOD is just a tad thicker and longer then the RC-6's handle. I'll sit on the fence on this one. Both handles feel really comfortable to me. The Resiprene-C feels great, it is nice and cushy and very grippy. Its a different beast then mircata which is bombproof and also very grippy. The mircata actually gets grippier when it becomes wet.
Regarding robustness. The Respirene C material is supposed to be extremely tough, resistant to chemicals including 100% DEET and highly resistant to tearing. Judging from the longevity and scratched to heck coatings that I've seen in Busse-Basic knives with the same coating material I'm a believer of the toughness of this material. As for mircata, I don't think I have to justify to anybody just how tough this stuff is. Mircata slabs will outlast any blade they are attached to. The SOD handle envelopes the tang while the RC-6 is full tang. According to the Scrapyard website the tang of the SOD is within 0.25" of the edge of the handle at the butt of the knife. In terms of applications, the SOD will be superior in cold weather conditions as the tang will not be in direct contact with your skin. The protruding tang of the RC-6 offers some versatility as hammer.
Having handled Cmdr249's SOD already, I was already familiar that it is tip heavy when grabbing it as you normally would with the handle. In fact the balance point is in the centre of its square choil. Square choil? Well, I don't know what the story is behind that one either. As far as choils do go, this one is comfortable to place your index finger in and allow you choke up on the blade. The choil will fit the fattest of fingers out there! The RC-6's choil is smaller than the SODs, but it fits my finger well. The balance of the RC-6 is at the handle, just behind the finger guard.
If you ask me which feels better for balance, I would have to say that the RC-6 feels much better. When you grab the knife by the handle it feels totally neutral and very quick in the hands. In contrast, the SOD wants to drop tip wise. This of course makes the SOD better optimized for chopping, an activity where it excels over the RC-6 both because of its balance and weight.
Choking up on the knife, with my finger in the index choil, again the RC-6 seems to win here in comfort. I can swivel the tip and control its movement with fine control. The SOD is just heavier and the thicker blade makes it feel slow and clunky. I know that I can probably accomplish fine tasks with the tip of the SOD, but nowhere near the ease that I could with the RC-6. Of course, moving to something like the RC-4 that fine tip control becomes much more pronounced.
Fit and finish are excellent on both the SOD and the RC-6. In both cases, the coating on the blades were even, although they both feature crinkly coatings. I couldn't find any flaws in either blade, coating or handle. There is only a slightly discernable seem line on Resiprene C on the underside of the handle. You can only see the seem line when looking at it closely and you can't actually feel it with your finger except for a small spot right under the finger guard. Nothing a tiny bit of sandpaper couldn't solve.
I've heard stories about how dull Busse knives and its affiliated companies put out. The SOD certainly did not meet the category of dull. Out of the box, it readily shaved hair on my right arm and push cut (with a tiny bit of knife draw) through computer paper. I'd have to say it was a bit sharper out of the box than my RC-6 which I had considered perfectly adequate in sharpness when I first received it! Here is a shot of the SOD slicing up some pine. This was a piece of our christmas tree so it is still a bit fresh. Makes fuzzies quite nice given the size of the knife!
Okay, a little bit of chopping. Well, I think this is what the SOD was made to do. It probably doesn't chop as good as the dogfather, but this knife is a good compromise in size/weight + decent chopping. Here is a piece of mystery wood I that obtained from my dad's house. It was frozen and the center, heartwood, is particularly hard stuff. The SOD did an amazing job chopping through this. The first picture below shows the depth of bit from my first chop. That thing really sunk into the wood!
About 5 minutes later I had worked my way through this 3.5" diameter log. I have to note that because of the length of the original log (about 2'), I chopped the log laterally by holding it up at the top end with my free hand and striking in at an angle toward the centre of the log. I only say this to indicate that I wouldn't have been able to chop this log down like this very easily with an axe, maybe with a small hatchet. Anyhow, knives like the SOD really are built for chopping through stuff and work very well on knife this size. IF YOU DON"T THINK A KNIFE SHOULD BE USED FOR CHOPPING WOOD THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR!!!!
Having done some chopping with the RC-6 already and being familiar with its characteristics, I'd have to guess (no direct comparisons were performed today) that the SOD is easily about twice as fast chopping an equivalent piece of wood. Now, if you asked me if the SOD would be able to chop something (other than concrete blocks) that the RC-6 couldn't then I would probably say no. I think both the RC-6 and SOD could handle about equal tasks in terms of chopping different diameters of wood, however the SOD will eat that wood quite a bit faster. I didn't baton with the SOD yet, although I think it is fair to say that it can handle this task with ease.
Overall, I like the SOD. It is a big thick, bomb proof chopper that falls within the sharpened prybar category. Thankfully, it is much sharper than a prybar and actually comes with a shaving sharp edge. I was under the impression that it is full flat, but it actually appears to be a very high sabre [edit] grind up 3/4 of the blade width. Flat enough for good cutting while maintaining the full thickness of the spine.
For versatility of a mid-size blade I personally think the RC-6 excels of the two. The balance, speed and fine tip control are superior on this knife. For heavy chopping the SOD kicks some serious ass and the toughness of scrapyard's SR77 is legendary. Both knives are excellent value for their price point especially when considering the direct purchase cost of the SOD. So if you ever thought which one between the two of them, well I guess that just comes down to what uses you see for your knife.
Seeing how I just opened my new SOD from the mail, I won't relegate it there just yet. Yes a big chopper knife was purchased! Somewhere in late Nov. the SHTF thing must have popped in my head. Spurred on by the marketing methods of the Bussekin, I immediately followed the impulse to buy with the short lived availability of the Scrapyard Son of Dog (SOD). It turns out I had ordered just in the nick of time!My knife just came in today. I'd like to make a quick statement about dealing with scrapyard as this was the subject of a rather lengthy and hijacked thread in the general knife discussion area last week.
When I decided to order the SOD, it was kind of a lark that I had checked the scrapyard website and a knife was actually available. I don't check the busse stores all that frequently, but every once in a while I will see what might be available. The odds of my just so happening to click on the scrapyard knives store at the time the SOD was available was kind of lucky given I hadn't heard of the model before seeing it there. Basically, how it works over there is the online store make knives available (usually a new model) as pre-orders in bursts and when some internal number of orders has been filled the company stops taking orders and over the next subsequent weeks ships out its knives to those who purchased them. There can be long periods between knife model offerings, where the store is referred to being 'dark', i.e. no knives for sale. An interesting aspect of this marketing scheme is that a particular model is released in batches and the total number of knives are controlled. It is also stated that the same knife model is never re-released over a minimum time span of 2 years and in some cases a given model, such as limited additions, may never be released again.
Therefore, if you see a knife that you like and it happens to be available at the scrapyard store, then you should scoop it up. Otherwise you will have to pay secondary market fees (usually marked up by about 30% or more from the direct purchase price) or you may not even be able to track the model you want down. In my case, I happened to click on the webpage, learned about the knife from the description, saw that it was available in the 'place orders' section and I purchased it by credit card. Everything else went pretty smooth. They don't charge your credit card until the knife is actually shipped. I actually made a mistake in the expiry data of my CC on my order. Renee contacted me by e-mail on Dec. 28. I didn't check my e-mail until Jan 5, in which case I replied back to her with the correct information. I pretty much figured that they would have cancelled my order by that time and would not have blamed the store had they done so. However, Renee was vary accomodating, got me set up and the knife was shipped out on the 6th. I received it today, even with a border stop to Canada. (Customs dinged me the GST tax and processing fees - well you win some and lose some
) All told, I was very happy with the ordering process and it seems that Scrapyard went out of its way to ensure my knife came to me.Okay to the review!!
I did get a chance earlier to handle the SOD last weekend as Cmdr249 brought his SOD along at our little get together in Ohio. However, I was so pre-occupied with all the knives he brought that day that I didn't pay too much attention to this one. For comparison, I am contrasting the SOD against the Rat Cutlery RC-6, another mid-size blade that many readers here are familiar with.
Specs at a glance:
SOD
Overall Length: 12.5"
Blade Length: 7.5"; Actual Edge Length: 6"; Blade Width 1.75"
Blade Thickness: 0.25" (not spec'd by me)
Blade Steel: SR77
Handle length: 5"; Handle Material: Resiprene C;
Knife Weight: 15.30 oz
Stated Warranty: No Questions Asked
RC-6
Overall Length: 11.75"
Blade Length: 6.5"; Actual Edge Length: 5.75"; Blade width: 1.5"
Blade Thickness: 0.188" (not spec'd by me)
Blade Steel: 1095
Handle length: 5" + small amount of protruding tang; Handle Material: Mircata
Knife Weight: 11.85 oz
Stated Warranty: No Questions Asked
Here are a comparison of shots between the RC-6 and SOD. I think these pictures provide some surprises about real world dimensions. The first shot shows the RC-6 and SOD in profile comparison. You can see that the SOD is larger knife all dimensions. It just looks huge compared to the RC-6.
Yet a lot of the blade real estate taken up by the 7.5" SOD is in fact part of the choil and a small extention of the index finger guard arises out of the handle as coated metal. As you can see from the specs, the actual edge length of the SOD is in fact only 0.25" longer then the RC-6. The RC-6 also has a choil, but it is smaller and the finger guard is fully integrated with the handle. The next shot shows the RC-6 lying on top of the SOD. The back edges of the two blades are lined up. This shows you how similar the actual edge length is. It also gives a perspective of the width differences between the two blades.
Now the profile comparison. In this case, I've lined up the front of the handles of the two knives together. You can see in this shot just how thick the blade of the SOD is relative to the RC-6. Here is where all that weight difference come in.
Comparing the handle dimensions, you can see that the SOD and RC-6 are very similar in overall length and thickness. The SOD is just a tad thicker and longer then the RC-6's handle. I'll sit on the fence on this one. Both handles feel really comfortable to me. The Resiprene-C feels great, it is nice and cushy and very grippy. Its a different beast then mircata which is bombproof and also very grippy. The mircata actually gets grippier when it becomes wet.
Regarding robustness. The Respirene C material is supposed to be extremely tough, resistant to chemicals including 100% DEET and highly resistant to tearing. Judging from the longevity and scratched to heck coatings that I've seen in Busse-Basic knives with the same coating material I'm a believer of the toughness of this material. As for mircata, I don't think I have to justify to anybody just how tough this stuff is. Mircata slabs will outlast any blade they are attached to. The SOD handle envelopes the tang while the RC-6 is full tang. According to the Scrapyard website the tang of the SOD is within 0.25" of the edge of the handle at the butt of the knife. In terms of applications, the SOD will be superior in cold weather conditions as the tang will not be in direct contact with your skin. The protruding tang of the RC-6 offers some versatility as hammer.
Having handled Cmdr249's SOD already, I was already familiar that it is tip heavy when grabbing it as you normally would with the handle. In fact the balance point is in the centre of its square choil. Square choil? Well, I don't know what the story is behind that one either. As far as choils do go, this one is comfortable to place your index finger in and allow you choke up on the blade. The choil will fit the fattest of fingers out there! The RC-6's choil is smaller than the SODs, but it fits my finger well. The balance of the RC-6 is at the handle, just behind the finger guard.
If you ask me which feels better for balance, I would have to say that the RC-6 feels much better. When you grab the knife by the handle it feels totally neutral and very quick in the hands. In contrast, the SOD wants to drop tip wise. This of course makes the SOD better optimized for chopping, an activity where it excels over the RC-6 both because of its balance and weight.
Choking up on the knife, with my finger in the index choil, again the RC-6 seems to win here in comfort. I can swivel the tip and control its movement with fine control. The SOD is just heavier and the thicker blade makes it feel slow and clunky. I know that I can probably accomplish fine tasks with the tip of the SOD, but nowhere near the ease that I could with the RC-6. Of course, moving to something like the RC-4 that fine tip control becomes much more pronounced.
Fit and finish are excellent on both the SOD and the RC-6. In both cases, the coating on the blades were even, although they both feature crinkly coatings. I couldn't find any flaws in either blade, coating or handle. There is only a slightly discernable seem line on Resiprene C on the underside of the handle. You can only see the seem line when looking at it closely and you can't actually feel it with your finger except for a small spot right under the finger guard. Nothing a tiny bit of sandpaper couldn't solve.
I've heard stories about how dull Busse knives and its affiliated companies put out. The SOD certainly did not meet the category of dull. Out of the box, it readily shaved hair on my right arm and push cut (with a tiny bit of knife draw) through computer paper. I'd have to say it was a bit sharper out of the box than my RC-6 which I had considered perfectly adequate in sharpness when I first received it! Here is a shot of the SOD slicing up some pine. This was a piece of our christmas tree so it is still a bit fresh. Makes fuzzies quite nice given the size of the knife!
Okay, a little bit of chopping. Well, I think this is what the SOD was made to do. It probably doesn't chop as good as the dogfather, but this knife is a good compromise in size/weight + decent chopping. Here is a piece of mystery wood I that obtained from my dad's house. It was frozen and the center, heartwood, is particularly hard stuff. The SOD did an amazing job chopping through this. The first picture below shows the depth of bit from my first chop. That thing really sunk into the wood!
About 5 minutes later I had worked my way through this 3.5" diameter log. I have to note that because of the length of the original log (about 2'), I chopped the log laterally by holding it up at the top end with my free hand and striking in at an angle toward the centre of the log. I only say this to indicate that I wouldn't have been able to chop this log down like this very easily with an axe, maybe with a small hatchet. Anyhow, knives like the SOD really are built for chopping through stuff and work very well on knife this size. IF YOU DON"T THINK A KNIFE SHOULD BE USED FOR CHOPPING WOOD THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR!!!!
Having done some chopping with the RC-6 already and being familiar with its characteristics, I'd have to guess (no direct comparisons were performed today) that the SOD is easily about twice as fast chopping an equivalent piece of wood. Now, if you asked me if the SOD would be able to chop something (other than concrete blocks) that the RC-6 couldn't then I would probably say no. I think both the RC-6 and SOD could handle about equal tasks in terms of chopping different diameters of wood, however the SOD will eat that wood quite a bit faster. I didn't baton with the SOD yet, although I think it is fair to say that it can handle this task with ease.
Overall, I like the SOD. It is a big thick, bomb proof chopper that falls within the sharpened prybar category. Thankfully, it is much sharper than a prybar and actually comes with a shaving sharp edge. I was under the impression that it is full flat, but it actually appears to be a very high sabre [edit] grind up 3/4 of the blade width. Flat enough for good cutting while maintaining the full thickness of the spine.
For versatility of a mid-size blade I personally think the RC-6 excels of the two. The balance, speed and fine tip control are superior on this knife. For heavy chopping the SOD kicks some serious ass and the toughness of scrapyard's SR77 is legendary. Both knives are excellent value for their price point especially when considering the direct purchase cost of the SOD. So if you ever thought which one between the two of them, well I guess that just comes down to what uses you see for your knife.
Last edited:
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