Survival knife- best for the money, no laughs!

psy-ops

psy-ops

Joined
Sep 27, 1999
Messages
3,164
You won't believe it. We had a guy in the fish business come in and order the fish splitter by SANI-SAFE, dexter russel. he gave me the code and I ordered it. when it arrived we all had a great laugh because this fish splitter is 12 1/2" long machete blade with those ugly white handles.It must be 3/16 or less thick.I think they use 440c steel. He never showed up (as usual with special orders).

So we always joked around about this knife and how it would be good for survival and combat.

finally yesterday> I brought it home for some product testing. my wife thought I was crazy. I first began hacking like crazy on this 6 ft log I got. then I started bouncing up and down on it while one end was resting on a step. It bent a little. then I started throwing it hard from 20 ft in to the log about 30-40 times I even manged to stick it in the log about 3 times. I broke a small rock with the back side. and more hacking. I got one little chip in the blade edge.

sh*t this is tougher than my Busse sh II.

The handle is a bit uncomfortable but a small sacrifice for a $32.50 retail short sword. It has great balance. plus I did things to that knife that make me cringe when I think about doing that to my busse.

I am seriously thinking of getting a kydex for it and working the handle to fit my hand better.

I always thought 440c wasn't very good as a survival but now I am starting to come around to it.

------------------
Men are born soft and supple;Dead they are stiff and hard.

Whoever is stiff and infexible is a disciple of death. Who ever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken . The soft and supple will prevail.

[This message has been edited by chrisaloia (edited 09-22-2000).]
 
Hey Dexter...

I just did a small Dexter Paring knife for a customer,, and was Very impressed with it...
Very nicely made knife I must say....

Shoot it over,, I'll sheath it up for you..
smile.gif


ttyle Eric....

------------------
On/Scene Tactical
Leading The Way In Quality Synthetic Sheathing
 
chrisaloia; are you by any chance related to Cliff Stamp? Perhaps a graduate of the Cliff Stamp Knife Testing School??
smile.gif


Walt
 
how much would that kydex crossdraw sheath cost?

I am seriously think that this is the perfect camp knife.

I am gonna steep it in some rain water overnight and start the testing allover again.


I am not sure about cliff's testing but I am so tired of knife testing/articles that don't abuse the knife. It sure as hell surprised me.

I did some field testing/abuse on my busse a few times. this past one some friends had a coconut and we were gonna use it in a recipe and they needed it opened. so field testing began i got my busse and whack whack with the cutting edge. yeah I knew the back would have worked just fine but I was in a "testing" mood. There were some serious chips in the edge. I know it wasn't made to cut coconuts but it is nice to see how far you can push your knife.


 
Chris :

I started bouncing up and down on it while one end was resting on a step. It bent a little.
Click to expand...

I don't quite understand what you mean by this, are you saying you jumped on the handle while the blade was wedged under something?

You chipped out a Busse Combat blade on a Coconut? That sounds odd. I would not have expected that. I'll pick up a one in the next few days and take it to pieces with a Battle Mistress.

-Cliff
 
Cliff,
I have a Busse #7, I also used it to open a (1) coconut. It seriously trashed the edge. No chips. The edge just folded over. The edge rolled right on the sweet spot, about two inches back from the tip and along the main cutting edge. I also used the #7 to chop the coconut up into small pieces for my two kids. I tried stropping it and steeling it, neither one worked to get the sweet spot back to shaving sharp. The main cutting edge came back when I stropped it on a DMT EX coarse stone. The stropped and steeled. I still have a ton of work to do on the front 2.5-3 inches of the blade.
After reading the various reviews of the Busse combat line and (ahem) some other reviews of the Basic I did not expect this to happen. On another note, I pryied chunks out ot the coconut with the #7 and it did't do anything to the knife. Nothing, and I pryied pretty hard. I wonder if I just managed to smash or roll the micro feather on the #7 and havent got it back yet?
Let me know what you think.
Shawn
 
I was leaning the tip on a step about 7" high and the handle was laying on the concrete. much like the way you would break a stick for kindling. and I was bouncing up and down on it with all my weight.


I find on flat ground blades like the steel heart. It has an extremely thin edge. I now prefer cantled edges better because there is more strength along the edge.

and guess what...the dexter fish splitter has a cantled edge.

I am still impressed.
 
Wow, the coconuts I'm familiar with are pretty soft. You can usually use a $3.00 machete to hack them open all day long. Are you sure it was a coconut and not a rock.
smile.gif
 
not2sharp,
The coconut that I bought had probably been sitting in the store for a month or more. It was not soft, more like rock hard. I have seen coconuts opened with cheap machetes, so I thought that it would be no challenge to my Basic #7. I think that I just had a bigger then average wire edge on the knife. Once I get rid of the wire edge I dont think that I will have any problem with my #7. I didnt have any problem opening the coconut, it just made my knife DULL. Even dull the #7 hacked through the outer shell and into the meat inside. I also peeled the coconut so that my kids could have big chuncks of the meat without any of the shell.

Shawn
 
Originally posted by chrisaloia:



I am gonna steep it in some rain water overnight and start the testing allover again.

I have owned dozens of dexter russell fishing knives,most with the 8 or 10 inch blades but some larger.Most of them never see the inside of a boat let alone ever been onshore.When they get slimey from use they get hosed off with salt water.When they get dull they are sharpened with a norten combo stone that spends its life on a hatch cover seeing just how much salt water it can soak up.They are usually stored stuck in a hatch cover,out in the elements.They don't rust.They are inexpensive,20/30 bucks,and they are available in most marine supply stores in most fishing ports so they are easy for me to replace when they get lost overboard.
Click to expand...
 
Shawn, based on what I have seen with the Basic I had, the edge is not as durable as on the full INFI line, which is kind of expected. I have seen some chipping on encountering hard objects (nails, thick wire) and some minor flattening (can be steeled out) on moderately hard objects. It was durable enough for me to lower the grind to about 20 degrees included and it has held up on wood chopping and such with only minor cosmetic damage.

I bought a couple of coconuts yesterday and hacked the tops off of them with the Battle Mistress and it was still shaving sharp when I finished. I no longer have the Basic so I can't comment on that. Anyway, if your edge is actually dented enough so that it is easily visible, stropping is not going to do much of anything. Steeling will help, a grooved steel will speed up the process, but may remove a significant amount of metal. In any case you are going to want to do some grinding to produce a final strong and durable edge.


Chris, that is fairly impressive. I don't think I ever tried to jump on a blade, however I have stood on them with no ill effects. Far less severe a strain though. As for edge profiles, well the edge geometry is not controlled by the primary grind. I have seen convex grinds with thicker and thinner edges than flat and or hollow grinds. You can as well have convex edges on flat or hollow grinds, or flat gound edges on blades with a primary convex grind.

The new Busse blades by the way have a dual flat/convex edge.

-Cliff
 
Hey cliff

Thanks for the info on grinds.

I reground my edge on the 3" wheel with a crystalon 120 grit belt and deburred it on a cotton flap wheel. can even tell and back to hair popping sharp.

my busse was purchased in sept 1995/6 ?
I wonder if he changed the grinds. because mine was very thin and I didn't mess with it until the coconut incident.

 
Coconuts have different stages of growth/hardness. The big green "water" coconuts haven't formed the hard inner shell. The meat is the consistency of jelly(tastes pretty good, so does the water
smile.gif
). When the hard brown shell is formed, the meat is pretty solid also. I use a hammer to open them at that point. Of course, I drain the water into a cup before breaking the shell so I don't waste it.
 
I've used a SRK several times to open coconuts without any problems, I've also used cheap K knife to open them too I beleive the K knife was the fastest and the cheapest of the two.
 
I think that an important factor is cheapness in a survival knife.

I think this point was brought up in greg walker's modern fighting knives book.

He talks of going into combat with an expensive knife could be a hazzard. cause you might not want to abuse it or be afraid to leave it causing you to hesitate that one second when it is too late. I have to say i agree with this logic.

If I have to dig a hole or do whatever when I might be a little hesitant with a more expensive knife. Plus with the fact that my testing proved that a cheap knife can be just as or even tougher than an expensive custom.

 
Chris, it is quite possible that your older model is without the dual grind. I don't know if the edge before that was convex or flat, nor how acute/obtuse the standard fare was. You could even have an A2 model. Andy Prisco (Busse forum moderator) could probably shed some light on the matter.

As for your comments on cheap vs expensive, you can get blades that fit those descriptions. However you can also get blades that don't. There are custom makers that will fully back their blades even under the hardest working conditions so you can use them concern free. This is not possible with cheaper blades unless you want to keep buying replacements.

Busse is one of these guys. If you are not satisfied with the performance and the edge is far less durable than a 440C cheap blade, I would recommend making a post in the Busse Combat forum, I really don't think that this is the expected behavior and you should be able to get it fixed.


-Cliff

[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 10-02-2000).]
 
If the Dexter/Russell knives are interesting you could also look at the Frosts/Eriksson butcher, fish, and kitchen knives, probably made of 12C27 at about RC57 in stainless, and carbon steel at RC60. I'm interested in the kitchen knives as they might end up being bargain performers like the 4in models, and it'd be fun to look at the larger carbon steel models too.
 
Interesting comment about cheap vs expensive, and the willingness to use them hard.

Since this thread is about survival knives, a custom maker's willingness to replace a broken knife is nice, but may not matter. After all, in a survival situation, you may not survive to enjoy the replacement.

No expert here, just an observation.
 
You want a full warrenty, not because your blade can be replaced in an emergency or survial situation, but because ; (1) it allows you to field test the blade with confidence before you have to rely on it in a serious situation, and obviously you evaluate all life saving gear before use, (2) there is a very high correlation between quality and coverage. Quite often, the knives with the best warrenties don't actually need them and the ones without them do, which is why they don't have them and the ones that do can afford it.

-Cliff

 
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