Warranty epicness

[DamascusBowie]

Bottom line, the warranty work was equivalent to having a regrind done. Time consuming and expensive, but provided as part of the deal by BUSSE! Outstanding.

And, it is very eye-opening how WARM the steel gets chopping thru wood. Kinda like the old saying about chopping firewood, "You get warmed TWICE." Well, if you count the heat dispersed into the steel, the wood actually has THREE warmings stored in it!

Yup, thats why the warranty is there, to cover such freak occurrences. And to introduce new busse knives, like perhaps the upcoming NMSFNO M

I doubt that chopping makes the blade warm enough to have any difference in toughness and I really wonder about the amount of damage which occured.
Was the Outlaw ground too thin? Maybe got burned during grinding? Was the nail made of infi, too? Questions...

I dont think it was the heat that did it, just that theres a lot of factors in play. The possibilities you mention are all in play as well. i just mentioned the heat because I experienced it and it was a surprise to me, and it happened to my MMD the day I chewed up its edge stupidly cutting through a steel belted tire.

edit to add:
On that day i used my MMD to chop through a 3/4 inch shet of plywood, and to partly chop down a hardened oak stump. halfway through the sheet the MMD got very warm, or at least thats when I noticed it, and I took a few breaks on the way to cutting through. I had worked on the stump before that and I was so impressed with the brute power of the MMD that I decided to cut a tire in half, and thats when the damage to the edge occurred. i dont know how much of a factor the heat was, if any. But I can imagine a smaller blade getting even warmer due to its size.

 

[Murman]

Is it INFI? Is there a chance in the customization someone switched out another metal, maybe a BG knife and reground it and sold it as the original? I'm not disparaging Ban but he's very quality maker. He could have the skills to copy a busse design in another metal and sell it as a regrind, keep the original and sell it later. I've known reputable people to do something like that. Possible?

 

[spurst]

Kudos on the repair, but I don't understand why the blade ended up so much shorter than it was? Not sure I'd want the center of balance to be so far off or not have it fit the old sheath. I apologize if this is overly critical, but warranty (to me) is getting it back to what it was - not just usable.

If having something custom makes you satisfied, that is outstanding, but I'd just want the old blade back to its normal self.

 

[PeteyTwoPointOne]

I doubt that chopping makes the blade warm enough to have any difference in toughness and I really wonder about the amount of damage which occured.
Was the Outlaw ground too thin? Maybe got burned during grinding? Was the nail made of infi, too? Questions...

Nah, the blade gets real warm when chopping but nowhere near what it'd take to wreck the HT...I think everyone's just kidding about that.

As for the grind, the OP says Busse's Custom Shop ground it-- so it should be within spec. They wouldn't purposely release a blade into the wild that they were concerned that would get compromised upon impact. If I understood correctly, Ban just prettied up the edge a bit.

 

[MacLaren1]

I reckon sometimes anything can happen.
INFI has proven itself so many times. Again and again and again....No worries here at all.
Just strange to see that happen is all.

 

[Blade Boss]

With a warranty like that..... I want an INFI fishing hook.

 

[B.F.U]

Back at the end of August, I took my NMSFNO on a little trip way back into the jungles of Waimanu valley on Hawaii island.

There was a regrettable shortage of dry, down firewood near camp, so I did what any Busse-wielding maniac would do: start chopping up the biggest, densest dead tree available so I could baton it into useful chunks!

Unfortunately, this big gnarled old thing was hiding a serious folded over nail.

Just looking at it in the field, I suspected some deep chunks had gone missing.

Cleaned up, that was damn sure the case :/

I got in touch with the shop, told them my tale of woe, and shipped them the knife as requested. Earlier this week, just like Amy said, Garth's handiwork appeared in my mailbox despite all the mil orders and ganzza craziness that must be leaving them seriously slammed

It's...slimmer, almost like a NMSFNO knocked up a Boss Jack and the kid got the SFNO handle and the BJ blade.

I kinda like it, though the balance is decidedly different and my sheath totally doesn't fit anymore. Good excuse to let Chad build me a new one, though

Many thank yous, Busse warranty!

Wait, was the top blade originally as long as the bottom blade?! That's awesome that they did a full regrind to keep good cutting geometry rather than just sharpening it with a really wide bevel, but why in the world did they need to shorten it? It seems like the damage was nowhere near the tip. Any thoughts? Seems perplexing.

 

[MR HAPPY]

.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Is it INFI? Is there a chance in the customization someone switched out another metal, maybe a BG knife and reground it and sold it as the original? I'm not disparaging Ban but he's very quality maker. He could have the skills to copy a busse design in another metal and sell it as a regrind, keep the original and sell it later. I've known reputable people to do something like that. Possible?

It's possible you may want to loosen the tin foil hat. I know that specific NMSFNO pretty well - what Ban shipped back is what I sent him. That's also a lot of work, with very little payoff, for a guy who seemingly quite busy. And I suspect Garth knows INFI from a knockoff.

On the length difference, the repaired CS knife was always a hair thicker and maybe a 1/8" shorter than any other NMSFNO I've seen. The bulk of the shortness did result from the repair work...I assume it was necessary to blend in after taking the edge far enough back to get past the damage.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Kudos on the repair, but I don't understand why the blade ended up so much shorter than it was? Not sure I'd want the center of balance to be so far off or not have it fit the old sheath. I apologize if this is overly critical, but warranty (to me) is getting it back to what it was - not just usable.

If having something custom makes you satisfied, that is outstanding, but I'd just want the old blade back to its normal self.

To be clear, I didn't ask for any particular outcome: they said send it in, I did, and then the next thing I heard was it was ready to be shipped back. It's unfortunate it couldn't be the same, which obviously would be best, but I understood the warranty to be "you break knife, we'll take care of you however we think best" rather than "you get an exact duplicate of a CS job you stupidly broke." I'm reluctant to complain about the functionality of the repaired blade until I have a chance to get out and beat it, and obviously I have a full-sized NMSFNO around still.

What I won't be doing again is buying a CS knife, paying for more CS work on it, then having it Banned and a custom fitted sheath made for it...too much $ sunk into a single user that can't be recovered even with a great warranty. But that's not Busse's fault, it's mine.

 

[cpirtle]

Hey Bud, box it all up and send it to me when it's convenient. I'll either put a new welt in your sheath to account for the more narrow blade or make you another one. If memory serves me right there were a couple of tweaks we talked about, maybe I can work those in.

Good on the crew to fix it for you too. Not that I doubted it but it should serve as a reminder since it comes up often enough, they will still honor the warranty on a modified blade.

 

[spurst]

i'm sorry - i didnt realize this was a modified blade. what were the modifications done to it? it is possible the modifications somehow messed up the heat treat which caused the infi to chip instead of fold?

 

[DamascusBowie]

i'm sorry - i didnt realize this was a modified blade. what were the modifications done to it? it is possible the modifications somehow messed up the heat treat which caused the infi to chip instead of fold?

Hard to hold Busse responsible if someone else worked the blade. According to Dr. Lecter Ban only polished out the edge but its still hard to hold the factory responsible for the damage especially when were talikng about uncharacteristic brittleness for INFI.

In that light i'd say that the warranty work was done in good faith and more than acceptable under the circumstances. The key factor being that the knife performed well out of spec.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

The blade was "modified" in the following way: Ban mirror polished the existing convex edge. From Jerry's prior posts on that specific type of work, I understand it to be irrelevant to warranty unless the work was done in such a way as to screw up the blade (bit of a catch-22, that).

Given what I know about Ban's process and the depth back into the blade chunks were cleanly avulsed out (not mashed down, as further up toward the tip), heat treat damage from Ban seems highly unlikely. But I'm no expert.

 

[tomthebaker]

Ban didn't do anything to the heat treat. Infi does chip occasionally. I bought a user NMFBM that had a badly chipped edge that I sharpened out.

 

[clampdaddy]

Looks like that blade had some of the little air bubble looking pits in it. Makes me wonder if there were a few of those near the edge that created weak spots where the edge broke out at.

Edit: I just double checked the pics and if you zoom in you can see an "air bubble" in each of the big chipped out areas.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Looks like that blade had some of the little air bubble looking pits in it. Makes me wonder if there were a few of those near the edge that created weak spots where the edge broke out at.

Edit: I just double checked the pics and if you zoom in you can see an "air bubble" in each of the big chipped out areas.

Interesting - no idea that's a thing with INFI. @Garth Reckner Did you have a chance to look at the actual damage? My pictures were taken with an iphone and may not be a great source of information on something that detailed.

 

[clampdaddy]

Interesting - no idea that's a thing with INFI. @Garth Reckner Did you have a chance to look at the actual damage? My pictures were taken with an iphone and may not be a great source of information on something that detailed.

I've ran into them on two blades of the ten or so INFI blades that I've personally stripped myself, but I have seen them in pics of other people's blades as well.

 

[F'lar]

Looks like that blade had some of the little air bubble looking pits in it. Makes me wonder if there were a few of those near the edge that created weak spots where the edge broke out at.

Edit: I just double checked the pics and if you zoom in you can see an "air bubble" in each of the big chipped out areas.

I noticed the same thing CD, small inclusions near the edge ( to my old tired eyes). Which is why I would have thought blade replacement, not repair (materials defect). Too me it can be noticed at the largest "chip" whilst the others look to be rolls and tears.
I believe it to be a stand up job to repair/reprofile the blade, I do also think this should have enough to consider the blade to be replaced. As long as the OP is happy is all that counts, myself on the other hand would have been looking more towards a replacement.
I mean absolutely no disrespect because no other manufacturer would have done what Busse combat did. Just my two cents.

 

[clampdaddy]

,

I noticed the same thing CD, small inclusions near the edge ( to my old tired eyes). Which is why I would have thought blade replacement, not repair (materials defect). Too me it can be noticed at the largest "chip" whilst the others look to be rolls and tears.
I believe it to be a stand up job to repair/reprofile the blade, I do also think this should have enough to consider the blade to be replaced. As long as the OP is happy is all that counts, myself on the other hand would have been looking more towards a replacement.
I mean absolutely no disrespect because no other manufacturer would have done what Busse combat did. Just my two cents.

I wonder if maybe it could be part of the reason they shortened and narrowed up the Blade as much as they did. Had to keep grinding untol they got past the inclusions?