knifetester said:
Because it was a review of the RAT-7 ...
Yes, however when you bring in other designs and make judgements the makers should get the same level of respect in regards to perspective. Now if you are just using them for aspect illustration it is different, but even then you have to be careful.
For example in a review of a Deerhunter if a Boye hunter was used to illustrate the drawback of thicker stock and you didn't note its advantages it allows for a ready misinterpretation even if you were not actually commenting on the design directly.
The above goes further and judges a design based on a misrepresentation of its intentions and the makers tests which Busse has publically discussed many times and are in opposition to the viewpoint given.
knifetester said:
I will pass on your kind words to Chad next time talk to him.
We have talked many times, the above is nothing new. He has my email. If he wants to debate it, or anything else I have said in public he can always find me on rec.knives. It is not moderated so anything goes.
What are the blade and edge profiles run at?
Seven inch blade, two inches wide, tapered tang, full flat grind, edge at 0.025, ground at 15 degrees per side. Essentially just a shortened version of something that Kirk would run as an cutting competition blade. That is my personal edge, about as thin as I would go and still feel comfortable on bad wood. Trim it down if you are more skilled, or restricted on woods.
Chopping ability is of course heavily dependent on wood type, the 75% is an average focused on medium density woods like spruce and sizes efficiently used for shelter and fire. On really hard woods the blade will be better as the GB profiles are optomized for soft woods. The GB axes for example don't work as well on stock lumber as ABS bowies but are
much more fluid in a piece of fresh pine.
On really large woods the blade will fall off as it stops being able to clear the wood due to lower penetration as more and more of the edge length makes contact, whereas the axe only ever "sees" its bit width in wood regardless of the wood size so it can handle larger wood readily, it essentially gets the same penetration on a 12" piece of pine as it does on a 3.5" (aside from the inherent hardness difference of the larger heartwood).
Specifically for example, a GB Wildlife hatchet will get 2" of bite on a 4" small pine stick and 2" into a 8" pine log just as readily and will thus just as easily knock the necessary size chips out of the bigger stick. A 10" bowie while making similar penetration on the smaller stick only gets about 1" deep into the 8" log, and won't clear chips wide enough to open the necessary notch width in a single v.
Of course there is another side, as always, the blade has an advantage on smaller and more lively wood. Taking down an Alder bush would be easier with the bowie and far more efficient, and that kind of work is actually really dangerous with an axe.
Of course you could easily make a 7" knife which had more chopping ability and fine cutting ability, just give it a handle and a half length grip and thus it could perform similar to a 10" bowie reach and heft wise and even have greater precision ability due to the more neutral balance in a forward grip. Busse is doing this with the Fusion grips, I think this starts to blur the defination of 7" knife though.
-Cliff
