No sweat about the flame war. We are all adults and have our off days. The others will keep us in line around here. I think what it boils down to is respect for others.
Busse and MD blades are rated as top by various people and both have their followers. I would say that Busse is more heavy duty survival/tactical with MD the other way around .......your choice.
I am not a fancy person but I limit my comments to my experience after using the blades in a real world situation. I don't sit down and device tests to see what I can do and what I can break.... I just use them and use them hard. NBothing wrong with test as it does keep the makers on their toes but some of the tests borders on insanity.
I did state in my previous post that I have chipped the edge on my ATAK. The wood is called Iron wood (does that say enough) and I picked that up in a dry river bed. To put this in perspective, the normal procedure is to hit ironwood with a hammer to break it and not with an axe. I have broken a forged Swedish axe trying to chop it..... rolled the edge and broke the handle.
The damage on the ATAK was limited to small chips on the edge and this was most likely due to sand in/on the wood. When I say small .... kind you can feel with a nail on the edge ...yes, I am paranoid.
At that stage I was upset because of this but to be honest, I doubt if I should have used the knife in any case ...but it was at hand. My fear at that stage was that the rest of the blade would display the same results and I tried to find out if I should be worried. Initially I got little joy from Kevin but after both calmed down, I did have a discussion with Kevin, followed by a visit and I am now satisfied that the tools are fit for purpose.
Overall, the edge profile of the MD's are much slimmer than those on my Busse's. My Busse's have also stood up well to hard chopping and trying to repair the axe I broke on the wood, I did hit the axe head a few times. The result was not chips in the edge but rather deformations.
Let me say that the MD's are not for everyone, just like the Busse's. Both are specialized tools that are really pushing the limits of what the steel and profile can do ........ Busse is built like a tank and the result is a blade that will take any and all kinds of abuse because of the inherent over design and excellent steel used.
Analyse your needs ...and I did mine. My blades have an easy time 99% of the time with duties such as preparing food, cutting rope and very little true abuse.
On my recent hunt, Kevin rammed a Pack Rat (5 inch blade, 3/16 steel and also 62 Rc edge on the edge) into the rock beneath the Kudu ....
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/ViewPhoto?u=915725&a=7200175&p=24435834 as he was cutting the throat. I can vouch for the fact that it was a hard hit and I expected severe point damage .......fantasies of snapping of 1/2 inch of blade and such. The damage was minimal and 1/24 of the point was gone, Kevin repaired that in about 5 minutes on a diamond steel. Now looking at the claim of brittle ..... to say the least, I would not consider this an issue.
I note you already have Busse's so I cannot fault your logic. Either one would have worked well but the final choice is yours .....
From Africa
