INFI is my favorite knife steel, but it's prices and the efforts I have to put into "fixing" coated blades all have their costs "to me". At some point, I WILL look at other options. There ARE some other great knife steels and very good knife-makers out there. Sorry to say, but I personally like the B1 more than the SAR4 and the B1 while not INFI is made of VERY good steel, comes VERY well finished with quality craftsmanship (IMO), it is SATIN and costs about 35% - 40% of the SAR4. = EASY choice for me. I own a B1 and won't own a SAR4. .... I could go on mentioning other GREAT options that I like better and at small fractions of the cost of the SAR4. But, to each their own.
Same goes for many of the knives on the secondary market. I want quite a few of them, but I will NOT pay stupid pricing for those either.
I haven't gotten my hands on an INFI blade yet, but you've summed up my feelings on the matter quite well - for Busse LE prices I could get some pretty amazing one-off custom knives. It's a trend I hate seeing, and reminds me a bit of cold steel. Cold steel used to make pretty good beater knives that could be gotten reasonably cheaply and performed well for the price, but the more they exaggerated the goofy marketing, and the more stuff they released in "san mai" laminated steel, the worse the cost-to-performance ratio became. Not that I'm saying CS is on the same level as Busse, but I think both companies have rabid fans that have driven up the cost of their blades to ridiculous numbers.
I have some old cheap CS kukri that works very well, but no way would I buy one of their current kukris at their ridiculous prices.
I doubt that my opinion will be much different for Busse blades, which might be a whole lot better than cold steel, but they come with a price premium to match. If I can get some REASONABLY priced INFI from the yard, I will jump at the opportunity, but 400 bucks for a 5 inch production blade is downright ridiculous.
As an aside, I've not spent too much time on online knife forums, and am unfamiliar with the acronyms - what does B1 stand for?
