Why the F?*@% would anyone want to buy to other overpriced hardcore knives?

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There is someone here who refered to himself as a "skinny chinese kid" who busted up a certain ATS-34 knife by beating it on concrete (I'm not sure exactly how) when he returned it for a replacement he was told to not do that again. Now why they do that? Has that ever happened to a Busse knife?
Here's a quote:
Man, I've seen a [edited - (certain knife)] destroyed beyond repair with three or four hacks by a skinny chinese kid trying to hack through a little bit of concrete...
 
Walking Man said:
Why the F?*@% would anyone want to buy to other overpriced "hardcore" knives?.
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Everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion! That's freedom baby. Enjoy it while they still let us monkeys play with sharp objects. :)

Really though, I have to say as much as I love the Busse and SRKW knives, I'm just a huge fan of anything sharp. Some have different handle materials. Others have cool hilts. Some are shaped like a felling axe and in fact are felling axes and some are great for scaring the hell out of the local soccer moms! But most importantly, they are all sharp and fun to play with and touch my soul on some deep and twisted level. I don't try to fight it, I just accept that I like what I like.

Oh, and all other knives SUCK! :D
 
Walking Man said:
There is someone here who refered to himself as a "skinny chinese kid" who busted up a certain ATS-34 knife by beating it on concrete (I'm not sure exactly how) when he returned it for a replacement he was told to not do that again. Now why they do that?
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had that person broken the knife while chopping concrete in actual use, as in he for whatever reason (wich would be hard to think of), needed to chop concrete with a knife, they may have sent him a new knife. understand that knifemaking is a bussiness. when you dont have a job outside of it - it is what keeps you fed clothed and sheltered. if you sell a product and someone destroys it in the act of destroying it (read - task is unneeded in any way shape or form for daily life, for a given task, or for survival.) and asks for another one - why would you send them another knife, wich could make you a considerable amount of money, knowing that they destroyed the knife for fun?

always remember that this is a bussiness, at some point, you have to give on how much money your willing to hand out to someone.

Walking Man said:
Has that ever happened to a Busse knife?
Here's a quote:
Man, I've seen a [edited - (certain knife)] destroyed beyond repair with three or four hacks by a skinny chinese kid trying to hack through a little bit of concrete...
Click to expand...

give me two 3' long pipes of 1/4" steel that are 4" wide and a little bit of duct tape/paracord, and i will destroy a busse. any busse. i am 5' 10" and weigh 135 pounds. i am a skinny white kid, and i can destroy a knife that most people consider "indestructable". all it takes is a willingness to forego common sense, experience, and material goods.


JenniferBusse said:
Jerry:

“*some material removed to minimize post length*

In edge holding D-2 is an excellent steel and easily surpasses SR-101 when cutting harder materials such as steel banding, bone, etc. . . In soft to medium materials they are very similar in edge holding. In chopping and high impact applications, SR-101 easily surpasses D-2. Because of this, I do not recommend that any D-2 blades be longer than 5”.

In extremely thin edges, such as are planned for the Hunter/Utility line, D-2 will prove to be a superior choice. The same qualities that make SR-101 a great steel for abuse, play against the house when it comes to extremely thin cross sections. Under contact (cutting not chopping) with harder materials such as metal banding, bone, rock, etc. . . SR-101 will roll whereas D-2 will prove to be the clear winner in these applications. However, if you do any heavy lateral stressing on a thin cross sectioned D-2 blade, you may be glad that your Swamp Rat D-2 blade is backed by the best no BS warranty in the industry! ;)

D-2 also has a much greater resistance to high heat applications. What does that mean to you? Well, for us, as manufacturers that means that very fine edges can be satin finished with little worry of affecting the temper along the edge. This is not the case with SR-101, or any other simple “high carbon” steels, where extremely thin sections along the edge can be greatly affected by the heat generated from polishing.

So, in summary, for an uncoated blade with extremely thin cross sections, where cutting is the only intended application and hard materials such as bone, metal banding, etc…will be in contact with the edge, D-2 will prove to be a superior steel in edge holding and resistance to the elements.

In more abusive applications where cutting is to be coupled with prying, lateral stressing, high impact, and overall toughness, SR-101 will prove to be far superior to D-2.” --- Jerry Busse
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in essence -
certain steels = better results under certain circumstances. deep sea diving, dedicated (and i do mean dedicated) skinning, extremely heavy chopping on the scale of taking down tree's are three examples of tasks that busse combat knives are not best suited for. they'll do the job - but other knives will do better.

99%+ of the population on the face of this earth will never in their lives chop concrete.

busse knives are not indestructable - most people just dont set out to destroy knives. were cliff set out to break a busse - any busse, im sure he would accomplish it. cliff does intentioanally break knives - and by posting the material shows that it isn't unbreakable, and sometimes at what point it will breaK. unfortunately, many people look at that and think "thats a weak knife" wich doesnt mean it is.

busse knives only makes a few models at any given time. more often then not, they gave edges that are meant to be able to take abuse while cutting well. if you want to cut very well, you may have to go to another company to get one stock from the company - meaning it will still be under warranty, whereas modifiying a busse to the extent of making it an excellent slicer will probably void the warranty (chances are its your work that made it break, not busse's).

busse only makes 2 or 3 types of handles on their knives, other companys will iether modify it for you for half the price of what busse charges, or simply make the knife that you want at a much lower cost.

cut down to one sentence -
there are better knives for certain tasks then busse combat makes.
 
SethMurdoc said:
99%+ of the population on the face of this earth will never in their lives chop concrete.
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.
True, BUT 99% will never need a knife to pry open a car to possibly assist in saving someone's life, but some us (like Jerry) will. What if the knife that broke from concrete was one that someone was using to save your life?
Wouldn't you be scared?
I would.
SethMurdoc, I know our arguements are going in different directions, but what I'm getting at is, Which knife would you count on to get your butt out of a sling?
 
By the way, Seth, thank you very much for the engaging arguements, I believe that you are very intelligent, and I respect your opinion very much.
 
Walking Man said:
.
True, BUT 99% will never need a knife to pry open a car to possibly assist in saving someone's life, but some us (like Jerry) will. What if the knife that broke from concrete was one that someone was using to save your life?
Wouldn't you be scared?
I would.
SethMurdoc, I know our arguements are going in different directions, but what I'm getting at is, Which knife would you count on to get your butt out of a sling?
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Walking Man said:
Why the F?*@% would anyone want to buy to other overpriced "hardcore" knives?.
When there are Busses that Cliff Stamp has SHOWN blow the competition away. Is all hype? Is it so that "they" can be a member of the tuff-knife owner fan club? (okay, you guys know which knife company I'm talking about, but it include others too) Is it looks? Hell, Jerry's knives are as much or cheaper than theirs? WHY? I don't want to start a flame war, okay, seriously, but it makes no sense to me. at all. :confused:
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i honestly dont beleive that i am taking it in a different direction, because your original question was asking why someone would ever buy another knife that was hyped as being a "hardcore knife" wich is anyone from frost cutlery to strider to darkops. so i took it as hard use, wich is more definable. that answer is that there are many reasons to buy other "hard use knives", mainly because the only thing going for busse knives on an end users perspective is infi. that takes into account that his warranty, and his customer service wont come into play as you "pry open a car".

i consider infi to be, at the moment, the best all around hard use knife there is. HOWEVER - i know that if you took enough time, energy, expereirence and study, you could design a knife that would be better suited for cutting open cars then anything that busse combat makes. one of the reasons busse combat probably wouldnt put it into production, is because it would be such a speciallized knife that it wouldnt applicable to many other fuctions, and hence wouldnt sell to a wide demographic. it may however be an excellent choice for a specific military group, in wich case things may be different. in order to have it custom made from busse combat, chances are youd be looking at 1,000+ depending on what size it is.

i know that for a parachute knife, as in something i need to depend on to get me out of my parachute should it get tangled is a knife with a serrated spine - and a gut hook at the forword end of it so that i dont have to think about where im placing the knife - i can just run the paracord across the back of my hand, into the serrated spine, and saw away without having to worry about it slipping off the serrations, and possibly off the tip causing me to have to reindex the edge. same goes for the forward edge and general cutting - i dont ever want to reindex my cutting edge because the material gets hung up in the "finger choil".

wich brings me to the "what if you have to extract someone from a car" or "what if its armegeddon and you have to survive on that one knife" scenario's.

would i be scared trying to get someone out? chances are no - not unless it was me in the car trying to get myself out, and i was in a bad situation (hurt, choking, blind, whatever). i wouldnt be scared, i would be frantic, and being frantic makes you do stupid fumbly things, like drop your knife on concrete, slam the knife back and forth raking the edge across metal needlessly, and a lot of other stupid things that break knives. if i trained, even a little bit for a vehicle extraction - chances are id carry shears and a crowbar to do the job with, and chances are if i did use a knife, my training would allow me to use it properly and not require the strongest knife on earth to accomplish the job.

it sounds like im calling busse combat knives good knives for people who dont know what their doing to keep them from breaking their own knives - and to a certain extent i am. you dont always have the luxury of a clear state of mind when you need to "abuse" you knives, one of the of the reasons they dont allow surgeons to opperate on loved ones - its just a really bad idea.


its really easy for me to argue for busse combat, they dont just have infi going for them, if they used any other steel it would be the best example of that steel in the industry, because they have one of the best extended heat treating protocols possible, and are willing to scientifically go through the process of designing one to fit whatever steel they do decide to use. their knives do consistently perform better under "hard use" situations across the board then knives of similar dimentions of different steels. but they are not the end of the world as far as knives are concerend. - busse combat only puts thin edges on a few of their knives (and those arent really thin edges by some standards), customs are out of the financial reach of the main demographic of knife buyers, infi is not best suited for certain tasks, and though the times have gotten better, the wait time may be to long for certain people.






i carry a 1/4 saber ground satin jack for use as a prybar and hammer when i need it (i break ice at work from our freezer. the sj is easier on the walls then an actual hammer is). i have sharpened the choil in case i ever actually need it as a knife, and i cut down a NICK so i could have a thin edc slicer sans choil. (as far as im concerened, the nick has no warranty on it anymore, and the only way i'd send in the sj is if it broke on another place of the blade. if it breaks on the choil, its my loss)

if i wanted didnt have my NICK mod, and i inteded to use the sj for edc - id probably make it myself out of a2, or another steel, because i dont find it acceptable to have a "finger" choil on a knife i intend to actively cut things on, or that i may at some point depend upon to use during a state of excellerated stress; its a liability. if i didnt have the ability to make my own knives like i do now - id buy a bark river for my own personal use because they fit my personal criteria better then any busse knife ever made. bark river to my knowledge has never hyped their knives as "extreme hard use" or anything of the sort, but they are just as good for it as a lot of whats available today. there are other reasons to buy other "hardcore knives" as long as you dont buy those said knives for hype reasons.
 
Addressing the title, two things come to mind which I haven't heard mentioned.

1. Competition. In business it allows the consumer to make choices. This is a good thing (keeps manufacturers on their toes).

2. Comparison. How do I know first hand which knives are better? Buy one and use it.

I tend to distrust second and third hand evaluations by so called knife experts, and those "other" manufacturers have just as many very vocal and loyal customers as Busse.

So, what do I like?
Most of my heavy use knives are Busse's. Purely for cutting/slicing I use knives from a guy down in Arkansas (uses D2). And for some very specialized jobs I love a small concealable fixed blade from those "otherr guys" from California who I am guessing this whole topic is about.
 
Who makes knives out of ATS-34 anymore anyhow? Not the company you were referring too, they make most of their blades from S30V.

Also, if you're using a KNIFE to cut concrete, you're a moron. Use the correct tool for the job, that not being a knife. I wouldn't use my Busse as a kitchen knife, and I wouldn't use it to cut concrete. I don't think Jerry would be real happy if I kept sending his knives back in after cutting concrete with them.
 
I own knives from both companies. I carry my MT-L the majority of the time. Why - 1. it comes with a sheath 2. Its as thick as my N.O. and weighs less 3. It doesn't slip or roll in my mitt when I'm digging or prying. 4. The overall design makes it a better weapon for me. (it doesn't shift when slashing and I get better penetration at the point) 5. It cost less.


My NO is probably a better camping knife, but thats not the only thing I carry a knife for. As for chopping concrete, I've used the butt of a knife to knock holes in cinder blocks and ceramic tile before but I've yet to find a reason to chop a concrete block in half.
 
Here is my 2 cents. If a person was to buy only Busse Knives, how would they ever know if something better is out there? I personally don't own a Busse yet, as I am awaiting the release of the new Battle Mistress, so I cannot say how good a Busse knife is. I do own a Fehrman, and I can say that it is a spectacular knife. Is it as good as a Busse? I don't know. Is it tougher than I will ever need? More than likely. You see, I like knives, plain and simple. There are aspects of the Fehrman Final Judgement that I like that, to my knowledge, aren't available on the Battle Mistress (for instance, many forum members who own both brands say that the Fehrman knives have better edge grinds). There are also things the Battle Mistress will have that the Fehrman doesn't (frankly, the BM handle looks more comfortable to me, and INFI is supposed to be more corrosion resistant than 3V, which is a plus for me). It has been said already; 'preference'. I am very loyal to the companies that have provided me with something special in a blade, but I would never limit myself because of said loyalties.
 
Regarding "chopping concrete blocks", there is a reason that this test is done and everyone seems to miss it. Of course we are not going to use a knife to cut concrete, however, when chopping and or using the knife in a survival situation it is common to have inadvertent contact with rocks and stone. The test of chopping through a concrete block demonstrates how well your knife will hold up when you have unintentional contact with rocks, stone, other hard materials. This is information that I want to know, because if I need to use my knife in a survival situation I would like to know if the edge is going to fracture as soon as I accidentally hit a rock.

Don't just look at the tests, but try to understand the reason behind the tests.

We don't place the knife in the vise and laterally flex it to try and pry the vise apart, but it sure is a good test to determine lateral strength and also determine how the edge will hold up when the knife is stressed.

Some of you might also want to do a little reading on how S30V holds up when used in large blades because the info I've seen doesn't support some of the views in this thread.

:D:D
 
i just try to play the devils advocate as much as possible while being informative/non combative in tone. its kind of hard to do that with busse combat since i buy them (almost) exclusively.

however, there isnt a busse out there that can do what my himalayan imports 30" ang khola can do.

concrete block testing is like most destructive tests a good one for knowing the limits of a knife's steel/heat treatment. however it often gives distorted views of a knifes capabilities - in otherwords, my knife chipped on a concrete block test: it is worthless and not good for "hard use". there are many definitions for hard use, not just chopping.

knowing the purpose of a test is essential, but realizing its applicability in the overal scope of the intended work is also. for the camp tramp/battle rat it is something that will most likely happen at some point. for a skinner, the chances are much, much less likely.
 
SethMurdoc said:
i just try to play the devils advocate.
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Yeah, I knew this all along. I read your comments on why you buy Busses, but not the other hardcore knife on the Bussecombat forums.
(because you could make them at home.)
Gotcha. ;)
 
Eric Isaacson said:
Some of you might also want to do a little reading on how S30V holds up when used in large blades because the info I've seen doesn't support some of the views in this thread.
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Some guys I really trust who makes blades in S30V who know a hellauva lot more about steel than I do haven't had any problems in their longer S30V blades. Not talking swords here, but say a 7 - 10" blade.

I don't see them routinely failing at all, we're talking apples and apples here. Both INFI and S30V are "great" knife steels. Arguing about which one is "slightly" better at what doesn't accomplish much IMHO. I feel confident with my knives made of both steels, and I doubt I'll be in a situation where one of these blades would ever fail me. I also feel that it'd be "me" who'd fail before these blades ever will.
 
NervousXtian said:
Some guys I really trust who makes blades in S30V who know a hellauva lot more about steel than I do haven't had any problems in their longer S30V blades. Not talking swords here, but say a 7 - 10" blade.

I don't see them routinely failing at all, we're talking apples and apples here. Both INFI and S30V are "great" knife steels. Arguing about which one is "slightly" better at what doesn't accomplish much IMHO. I feel confident with my knives made of both steels, and I doubt I'll be in a situation where one of these blades would ever fail me. I also feel that it'd be "me" who'd fail before these blades ever will.
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I'm talking about blades in the 7-9" range.

I didn't say that S30V blades would "routinely" fail, but the tests I've seen don't reflect your optimism.

I'm not trying to argue with you, I just wasn't aware if you'd seen the test data regarding S30V. If you feel confident in the qualities of the steel, then I will respect that.

:D:D
 
Oh, don't want to start any arguments, already been to many of these pissing matches in the past. I'm confident of S30V in the right hands, and in the hands of a Paul Bos HT I very confident in what the blade is capable of. It holds a great edge, it's strong, resists rust, and can take a lot of abuse. I'm confident in both my "other" brand blades and my INFI blades of being able to take whatever I dish at them. The chance of either of these blades failing me in almost any situation I could possibly imagine is quite small. BUT if they are ever compromised I know both owners will take care of me in making the blade right.. they've proven this.

Instead of comparing why Busse's are better than brand X, you should be telling people why Busse is better than say, Cold Steel, Buck, Gerber. The budget knives that are made out of lesser quality steels.
 
most people who would buy a buck or a gerber wouldnt spend the kind of money busse's and "brand x" sells for. they are really in different catagories, and most of the time i dont even bring up the higher end makers when discussing blades like buck and gerber, i bring up benchmade and kershaw.
 
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