AZTimT
The Stripetition Finish Guy (inactive)
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2009
- Messages
- 4,506
Ok, so with everything that has changed over the years my time available to contribute here has been fairly limited. It has been a while since I have put any decent review threads up so I figured I would see if I could do something about that. Big Dave was/is my mentor in the adventure to Hogdom, so I must remember what he taught me about beating a Busse and sharing the experience with the rest of the trough, apologies for not doing that much the past few years.
Anyways, I was very intrigued by the new coating offered at Blade this year and even though I was unable to attend, I was able to score two sweet blades after the fact. One of them is Sharkzilla, a cerakote coated TTKZ. I enjoy the custom shop version I have but could use one a little safer to use with two boys growing up on the place. So I figured the coating, the price and simpler design might give me the excuse I needed to acquire a ceracoted one to try out. They are pretty, so I figure not too many others are going to be in a hurry to beat on their pretty blades. Here is Sharkzilla as received:
Right side in hand shot
Logo side in hand shot
Flying Tiger closeups
It even has my favorite Busse logo, the HHFSH with hog tag
The handles are coated too, they are canvas micarta, but I am not sure which color.
As you can see from the pics above, Sharkzilla is a very good rendition by the Busse crew to pay homage to the Flying Tigers of WW2 which I have always found interesting and since many of those planes wound up with battle scars, it should only enhance the homage if Sharkzilla does too. What's life experience without a scar or two? Here are the after chopping & splitting wood shots, though there was very little splitting and mostly chopping done:
Sharks love water, don't they? I tried to set this one free, but it appears this one works better as a land shark now, though she is waterproof.
The coating is multi-layered in order to get the white the black is done overtop of a white base coat. This makes the second coat have very little to adhere to and it comes off pretty easy. The bottom white layer lasted about half as long as the normal powdercoating does, but it is way smoother with much less friction. It almost felt like the INFI was lubed when trying to get it to stick in wood for photos, which was very difficult to do so I just posed the knife unstuck.
Closeups of coating wear. The white over bare grey infi belly seems to make the shark face even more fitting.
There are videos that will be posted up later in post #2 after they are edited by the wife, there was much more video than photos taken today since she was available to run the camera while I ran the steel.
Overall, Sharkzilla did not disappoint. The edge had typical end of the world Busse thicker shoulders than necessary V-edge, which I have already taken care of for a very big improvement in bite while chopping. I was impressed with the performance of the cerakote being very similar, if not slightly even more slippery, than bare satin INFI. It looks neat and is much smoother with no crinkle to it. The down side is that it is not a very tough coating from a wear standpoint. For those who like the rode hard and put away wet battle scarred look, this is the coating for you. For those who like corrosion protection but don't want more friction from a coating, this is definitely the coating for you. If you plan to strip, I suspect you will find the normal powder coating to be the better choice, but if you like bare INFI you have to earn through use, this is the coating for you. If you are one of the belt sanding modders, well, what coating is going to slow you down anyways? Pretty much as a user, I would love to see this coating option offered if it could somehow speed up order completion by easing workload or processing time for the Busse shop crew and/or reduce cost for combat grade offerings. If the cost was the same I would still be ok with it and if it was an upsell option, I would be on the fence about it as I do like to strip down to bare INFI on many of my users. I am very glad I scored this particular blade though as it does exactly what I want it to while looking unique.
Thanks for making another sweet batch of blades available at Blade '15 Jerry, Garth, Lexi and the rest of the crew!
Anyways, I was very intrigued by the new coating offered at Blade this year and even though I was unable to attend, I was able to score two sweet blades after the fact. One of them is Sharkzilla, a cerakote coated TTKZ. I enjoy the custom shop version I have but could use one a little safer to use with two boys growing up on the place. So I figured the coating, the price and simpler design might give me the excuse I needed to acquire a ceracoted one to try out. They are pretty, so I figure not too many others are going to be in a hurry to beat on their pretty blades. Here is Sharkzilla as received:
Right side in hand shot
Logo side in hand shot
Flying Tiger closeups
It even has my favorite Busse logo, the HHFSH with hog tag
The handles are coated too, they are canvas micarta, but I am not sure which color.
As you can see from the pics above, Sharkzilla is a very good rendition by the Busse crew to pay homage to the Flying Tigers of WW2 which I have always found interesting and since many of those planes wound up with battle scars, it should only enhance the homage if Sharkzilla does too. What's life experience without a scar or two? Here are the after chopping & splitting wood shots, though there was very little splitting and mostly chopping done:
Sharks love water, don't they? I tried to set this one free, but it appears this one works better as a land shark now, though she is waterproof.
The coating is multi-layered in order to get the white the black is done overtop of a white base coat. This makes the second coat have very little to adhere to and it comes off pretty easy. The bottom white layer lasted about half as long as the normal powdercoating does, but it is way smoother with much less friction. It almost felt like the INFI was lubed when trying to get it to stick in wood for photos, which was very difficult to do so I just posed the knife unstuck.
Closeups of coating wear. The white over bare grey infi belly seems to make the shark face even more fitting.
There are videos that will be posted up later in post #2 after they are edited by the wife, there was much more video than photos taken today since she was available to run the camera while I ran the steel.
Overall, Sharkzilla did not disappoint. The edge had typical end of the world Busse thicker shoulders than necessary V-edge, which I have already taken care of for a very big improvement in bite while chopping. I was impressed with the performance of the cerakote being very similar, if not slightly even more slippery, than bare satin INFI. It looks neat and is much smoother with no crinkle to it. The down side is that it is not a very tough coating from a wear standpoint. For those who like the rode hard and put away wet battle scarred look, this is the coating for you. For those who like corrosion protection but don't want more friction from a coating, this is definitely the coating for you. If you plan to strip, I suspect you will find the normal powder coating to be the better choice, but if you like bare INFI you have to earn through use, this is the coating for you. If you are one of the belt sanding modders, well, what coating is going to slow you down anyways? Pretty much as a user, I would love to see this coating option offered if it could somehow speed up order completion by easing workload or processing time for the Busse shop crew and/or reduce cost for combat grade offerings. If the cost was the same I would still be ok with it and if it was an upsell option, I would be on the fence about it as I do like to strip down to bare INFI on many of my users. I am very glad I scored this particular blade though as it does exactly what I want it to while looking unique.
Thanks for making another sweet batch of blades available at Blade '15 Jerry, Garth, Lexi and the rest of the crew!
This is what it was supposed to show.
:thumbup:
