A shot of a basic #7, from the Bad Mojo website :
UPDATE : the Basic line has been discontinued. The line has been more of less replaced by the blades from Swamp Rat Knife Works.
The review consists of :
The Busse Combat Basic #7 is is a seven inch drop point blade weighing 340g and balanced about a half an inch in front of the handle. The knife is made by stock removal out of quarter inch thick M-INFI, and comes with a black powder coating. It has a full flat primary grind which tapers to the Busse asymmetrical edge bevel. The edge is less than 40 degrees included when measured from the height of the wider bevel.
It has a fully enclosed grip made of "Resiprene C" a synthetic dense rubber like material, which is set on a slight drop to the blade, about five degrees. The handle is contoured to be ergonomic and secure with a guard to enhance grip retention and a rear end hook to provide a drive point to increase power on the swing.
The included Kydex sheath is similar to the one that came with the Battle Mistress. It has an additional hole directly in-line with the hole in the guard which can be used to lock the blade in position. The blade fits securely in the sheath and the lip retention is strong enough to hold the blade in place without the strap across the grip.
The Basic in general cut well, roughing wood to shape, the Basic could remove stock almost three to one compared to the Steel Eagle from TOPS. It also did well compared to the Project from Chris Reeves.
The Basic and the 107D Steel Eagle from TOPS have the same level of chopping ability considering penetration into fresh woods. Considering that the Steel Eagle weighs 503 g as opposed to the Basic's 340g, the equal chopping performance showcases the much more efficient (about 50% by weight) cutting profile of the Basic. The Steel Eagle has a shallow sabre hollow grind and much thicker edge which reduces its cutting ability significantly though does make it more fluid so it works better on soft woods like fresh pine.
The edge on the Basic held up well, resisting damage strongly. It was used often in the kitchen on hard work around bones, cleaving whole chickens in half with no problems. An accidental chop into a nail however did knock a piece out of the edge about 0.25 mm deep, however after a full sharpening, the Basic could take heavy chopping with just a little flattening, no chips or large dents. The ATS-34 and VG-10 F1 tended to take more damage on the same work. The ATS-34 F1 resisted deforming more than the VG-10 blade, but tended to fracture where the VG-10 chipped.
After a fresh sharpening the edges of the blades were stuck with a a mild steel bar five mm in diameter both straight down on the edge as well as from the side. After fifty hits the ATS-34 F1 lost a piece about five mm long and 0.2 mm deep, the chip on the VG-10 was significantly smaller only 1.5 mm long and 0.3 mm deep. The Basic took the fifty hits with no chipping, an additional fifty hits were performed with only minor rolling, no chipping. The Basic was often subjected to such uses, and for example was used to cut holes off the roof of an old car and handled it with no problems. In an extreme case it was used to cut the drain out of a kitchen sink, again it did this without difficulty :
The basic was also used for wood digging, to break apart the wood to burn, ofent to get pitch wood. The handle was comfortable and secure and the blade sank in deeply with no damage. It was also stabbed through a car hood with no problems, replicating the infamous Cold Steel tanto promotion. Full power stabs into harder woods with hard pulls to the side were also done without difficult. he Basic broke the wood out easily with little tip deflection. It was used for a lot of heavy wood prying on many occasions, the only effect was to remove some coating to the tip.
The Basic was used to split a lot of wood, often with a wooded mallet and other times just with a lot of lateral force to break the wood apart, over 200 lbs. The blade was easily strong enough to support 180 lbs pulls up from the handle with no problems (note the TUSK broke under much lighter conditions [ref]). Held at six inches or so back from the point the Basic could be flexed with difficulty to 45 degrees and would return to true.
The edge holding on the Basic series has been illustrated by live rope cutting demonstrations by Jerry Busse. This aspect of performance was examined over a variety of applications.
The Basic and a custom D2 blade from Mel Sorg. were used to cut strips off an old piece of used carpet. The strips were eighteen inches long. The number of slices necessary were used as a measure of sharpness. The performance :
| Model | First run | Second run | Third run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 6.8 +/- 0.2 | 7.8 +/- 0.3 | 7.9 +/- 0.2 |
| D2 | 6.6 +/- 0.2 | 7.7 +/- 0.2 | 8.0 +/- 0.2 |
Since the Basic was longer, the performance was normalized to length. In short there is no significant difference in how either blade blunts. When the blades were burnished lightly with a smooth steel, the Basic saw a large gain in sharpness, however the D2 blade saw no significant improvement, it was to use a fine ceramic rod to restore the sharpness, a half a dozen strokes on each side brought back push shaving sharpness. The difference in response to sharpening was probably due to the D2 having suffered light edge fractures on the grit in the carpet. The edge retention of the Basic was also explored in additional detail later on (ref) against some other blades.
The Busse Basic, TOPS Steel Eagle, F1 from Fallkniven, and a BUCK Zipper were used to do some digging. The blades were sharpened to a high polish, the F1 still had a couple of large nicks (0.5 x 2 mm) from previous high impact work. The blade specifics :
| Model | Steel | RC | Bevel (thickness / width) | Included bevel angle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | M-INFI | 58-60 | 0.80 / 1.35 | 33 |
| F1 | VG-10 | 59 | 0.70 / 1.10 | 35 |
| Buck | 425 mod | 57 | 0.80 / 1.05 | 42 |
| Steel Eagle | 1095 | 57-58 | 1.40 / 1.40 | 53 |
The knives were first used as picks loosening the soil and prying up rocks. The edge was kept trailing to minimize impacts. Each blade dug a hole about 1.5 feet square and about the length of the blade deep. None of the blades suffered any chipping or significant impaction. The blades were then stabbed about 3-4" into the ground and raked hard edge leading for about two feet, repeated six times with each knife, two handed with TOPS Steel Eagle. There were decent sized rocks in the way of the cuts (three to four inches across) and the blades were scoring across the tops of them.
The edges were all blunted and showing a little impaction, none were significantly damaged. At arms length no distortions could be seen unless the blades were tilted so as to reflect light. The TOPS blade was very worn but suffered only one small dent. The Buck seemed to be worn as much if not more and suffered visual indentation and fracture in about a half dozen places. The F1 was worn less, it felt still a little sharp but it was indented and fractured similar to the Buck. The Basic indented more so than the other blades, but didn't chip, and was also still significantly sharp.
To measure the sharpness, 1/4" braided rope was sliced, three cuts for each knife with the rope held under tension. When sharp, each blade would make a cut with less than one inch of edge. The Basic was still very aggressive, as the F1 decently so. The Buck and Steel Eagle could not cut through the rope, showing little progress after fifty slices, only making it slightly more than quarter of the way through. The blades were then steeled and the cutting repeated and could all then make the cuts. Summary, normalized in length :
| Model | After digging | After steeling |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | 4-5 | less than 1 |
| F1 | 5-6 | 1-2 |
| Steel Eagle | 100+ | 6-8 |
| Buck | 100+ | 9-11 |
The F1 did well, but the results reflect the pseudo serrated effect of the initial nicks which allowed the blade to act as a saw. The Basic retained its cutting ability the best showing the highest edge retention, and was close to optimal after steeling. While the TOPS blade suffered the least damage due to the thick edge it had extensive wear which drastically reduced its cutting ability.
The blades were restored on a twelve inch SiC Norton stone. The Buck needed 150 strokes per side and the Basic and F1 only 100. The TOPS needed about 450 but that was because the factory bevels were uneven and had hollows. After the rough grinding they were polished on a fine India hone, then finished on an 800 grit Japanese waterstone, 25 strokes on each, and finally were made shaving sharp by some stropping.
UPDATE : the Steel Eagle should not have been subjected to a double handled pull when the other blades were not this introduces a bias into the comparison - however its behavior in this respect was tested many other times and was behind the Basic consistently.
The Basic was sharpened to three different finishes and some chopping work was done to see how each finish responded. The abrasives were a black x-coarse diamond hone from DMT, a fine India hone, and a CrO loaded strop. The sharpness was tested by the amount of slices need to make a cut through a roll of fabric. The results :
| Finish | Initial | 500 chops | 1000 chops | Steeling | Stropping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X-coarse DMT | 1.6 +/- 0.1 | 2.5 +/- 0.1 | N/A | 2.1 +/- 0.2 | 2.2 +/- 0.2 |
| Fine India | 1.6 +/- 0.2 | 2.8 +/- 0.3 | 1.5 +/- 0.2 | 1.4 +/- 0.3 | |
| Loaded Strop | 1.1 +/- 0.1 | 1.2 +/- 0.1 | 1.2 +/- 0.2 | N/A | |
The highly polished edge easily stands out the best, the very coarse edge degraded the fastest and had a lower responce to steeling. As the micro-teeth are get larger with more coarse finishes they get more fragile and are thus easily broken by impacts, however more coarse edges have better edge retention on slicing.
UPDATE : the above work was early in the development of the reviews and there are problems with some of the methods such as keeping the force constant when slicing the rope and rolls of fabric. There is also a large difference in edge profile among the blades, and while the results can be used to contrast the behavior of the knives, it is difficult to comment directly on the inherent properties steels. In order to draw such conclusions the blades should be reprofiled to similar edge angles.
The steel is somewhat difficult to grind, more so than simple carbon steels, but tended to have minimal burr problems and in general responded well to hones.
During chopping the coating wore back from the edge readily along the impact region removing a patch about one cm wide and about ten cm long. It was also very readily scraped off during the digging and abraded quickly when the blade was stabbing through sheet metal and the like. In comparison there are much harder and more wear resistant coating available such as the Hard Chrome McClung used on his blades and the coating Mission Knives uses. The coating on Ontario machetes also tended to last longer than the powder coat on the Basics.
However rusting was never much of an issue with the Basic as the M-INFI held up very well and in fact was never oiled, just dried. After most of the coating had been removed through all the cutting, digging and hacking, the Basic was subject to several water soaks. A dip in fresh water produced no effect after hours of exposure, an addition of one tsp of salt and another five and a half hours produced three very small rust spots were found, one to two mm across. Ten hours later no additional rusting had been induced. The performance of the blade was checked cutting rolls of fabric and showed no significant degradation. All rust was then removed easily with a Scotchbrite pad.
The Basic was subject to further salt water soaks along with other blades for reference, and held up better than most, easily for example taking much less damage than several high carbon stainless production blades (ATS-34, VG-10), and holding up much better than a custom D2 blade. The Basic tended to be easily cleaned while the other blades had large patches of pitting and extensive corrosion which needed to be sanded off. One of the harshest tests was a heavy mixture of salt water (2 tbsp of salt per 8 oz of water) which was poured over the Basic and a Steel Eagle from TOPS (1095). After 4 hours the TOPS blade was completely covered with corrosion. The Basic had some spots along the spine and the bevel. When the cutting ability was checked by cutting rolls of fabric the Basic showed a many to one superiority in edge retention over the Steel Eagle. During the soaking, the coating was constantly being penetrated by the rust and would come off in flakes when the blades were cleaned.
The grip is comfortable in hand with no sharp edges and is decently secure. Since the grip enclosed the entire tang it is functional in a wider range of temperature extremes than than slabed handles. It absorbs shock well during heavy chopping except for the grooved portion on the sides of the front of the grip these can be a little irritating. It is in general more comfortable than the Micarta grips on the regular Busse INFI line, however does have a little lower security because of less pronounced forward and rear guards. In extreme conditions the grip does have security problems. With mineral oil on the handle full power stabs were not possible, the hand would ramp over the guard, and the chopping ability was significantly reduced due to the blade rotating in hand.
The "Resiprene C" also showed itself to be very durable, retaining it function while Kraton grips on Cold Steels knives degraded after a similar period of use becoming very worn and slippery. The Kraton grips on the Cold Steel fixed blades went slick and broke free of the handle after extended use. The grip on the Basic however had no such problems. However it is rather easy to cut, and will abrade a lot easier than something like Micarta. However it does handle temperature extremes well, and doesn't become brittle even after being left in a basement freezer and could still take hammer hits without problems. Direct flame can ignite the material, but it takes awhile (about six seconds with a lighter had it starting to smoke). On an interesting note when super heated like that the grip material can be molded. Applying the flame to the cut parts of the grip, the lesions could be repaired.
The grip was later modified for personal ergonomic preferences, a shot after a lot of contouring and shaping was performed :
Essentially the handle was flattened a little on the bottom, the curvature was deepened behind the guard and in front of the butt book. some chopping. An index finger cutout was also added. The white material is an epoxy which was used to fill out some areas, and the green tape was used to enhance security in extreme circumstances.
The Basic has a full flat grind, decently thin and acute edge and a decent mass and blade heft and thus cuts and chops well. It is comfortable and secure in hand due to the well formed grip which is a significant improvement over many Kraton handles. The blade steel, M-INFI is a solid edge holder in terms of wear and impacts, staying sharp for a long time and is easy to resharpen. Even when digging the edge tended to roll rather than fracture and responds well to steeling. The coating is not all that durable and wears off rather quickly, however the steel resists corrosion well enough that this was never an issue.
Comments can be sent to : cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com. Feedback can also be seen in the following archived thread :
The Busse Combat website can be visited for more information.
Update : the Basic was later broken after being used for more than an additional year of very hard work, frequently used to split very knotty wood by batonin with a framing hammer. It eventually suffered a clean crack breaking it in two. Here is a shot showing the extremely worn condition it was in before it broke :
| Last updated : | 04 : 10 : 2006 |
| Origionally written | 12 : 5: 1999 |