For me, INFI has always been a niche steel . . . and not always due to the alloy itself. INFI is almost always married to hard handle materials. IMO, hard handle materials are not very well suited to knives that are designed to absorb a lot of shock. Choppers fall into this category. So I don't own any INFI choppers and I doubt I ever will.
Slicers are fine with hard handle materials. But they don't require a great deal of lateral strength . . . a quality that INFI excels at. And INFI is expensive . . . VERY EXPENSIVE. I've never been convinced that I need to pay for something I don't need. And far less expensive alloys including stainless alloys exist that work perfectly well in slicers. So I don't own any INFI slicers and I doubt I ever will.
So where does INFI excel? For me it's the 5"-8" blade range . . . the middle ground between choppers and slicers where some chopping may be required but not dedicated chopping and some slicing may be required but not dedicated slicing. It's in this category of mid-sized fighters/camp knives that INFI's combination of qualities come together to make it nearly unsurpassed as a cutlery alloy.
That's just my opinion, of course.
Those are my thoughts exactly.
I've passed on the FBM so many times, it took a while to realize why.
If Jerry could do a FBM with mudder textured Res-C handles, I'd sell a kidney to get one.
As is though, the Dogfather is better (I can't believe I just said that).
As for INFI itself, it was when Noss did the FBM destruction test that I was really convinced about the stuff. Virtually all steel types, including S-7 (SR-77) had chunks tear out when cutting steel. Not INFI.
No tearing, no chipping, ever.
Great stuff.
