INFI is Stronger ,now remember stronger and tougher are 2 different things for steel. If you had 2 identical knives ,one INFI and one S7 and put them in a vise and attached a torque wrench the S7 knife would start to bend before the INFI one.

Toughness means when it does bend it does not break and can be bent back with no ill effects.

154 is also a VERY strong steel and will have more strength than S7 but when it does bend it is more likely to crack and have bad edge deformation.

You will notice that the Muppy tests had no damage to the edge but also there was no bending test like with the S7.

A8 is usually used on things like the front end loader teeth at this nickel mine in Ontario that is the worlds harshest environment for tools etc. The slag from the mine is super hard and corrosive and even A8 teeth are done in a few hours.

A8 and S7 are not cutlery steels which is why no one else uses them. The amazing thing about Busse is their heat treat. Getting S7 hard enough to hold an edge had never been done before. INFI and A8 have so much very very expensive alloy that it is very expensive and is used in heavy industry where stopping production is even more expensive.

Fallkniven attempted to use INFI but abandoned it when they could not get the heat treat right. Jerry is no backwoods guy with a propane furnace. I beleive he taught at an University before the knifemaking gig. Even 52100 through hardened was to tough to work with for a company like Spyderco who are no slouches.

In many ways the coolest Busse steel is the CPM154. I think you guys would LOVE it if it came from the factory actually sharp because it is just so [censored] hard to put an edge on but should hold one like nothing else.

Like northern I run my INFI knives very very thin because they can handle it.
154 can as well and maybe even better if we can just get one with a thin enough edge.

justin gingrich has had some incredible results with S7 and while he has made custom knives with this steel it is the performance of his ENTRY TOOL that impressed me so much.

he took one to iraq and did everything from chop cars in half,chop concrete blocks up and his day-to-day "door kicking in" and "window raking" duties as a contracted bad [censored] over there and he had pics to document it all

he had that very same entry tool from the pics at his table at BLADE and i was very impressed with how the edge looked after all that ruckus.it made me very glad to own one of his ET's.

i am also very glad to own a crash axe from the swamp in S7.the thing with air bubbles in the bad batch of S7 was also a fluke and while i experienced it twice it has had no negative effect on my impression of this steel with the busse HT.

i have had a few experiences where the edge on my S7 blades has rolled when i didnt think it was warranted and know my high carbon pices in 5160 or 52100 wouldnt have done that but they also cant be bent all the way down on themselves like a contortionist,practically bent in half like is capable with these srappers in S7.

everything has a trade off.i know for a fact without trying to sound like an "internet expert" that these scrayard S7 blade will take more high impact type of abuse than any other cutlery capable steel.jack hammer bit steel is jack hammer bit steel ya know!!

were all familiar with A2 in use for knives and we know that their is a such thing as A8,wheather busse uses it or not,but does that mean their is such steels A3,A4,A5,A6, and A7 steels also??

how high up the numeric scale do these A-SERIES steels go.is there an A9 or A10 as well.

I think the Bussekin steels give their best in large blades. The Battle Mistress is a market leader in tough performance chopping ability.

For smaller blades there are at least four steels I can think of which eclipse the Bussekin steels. These four steels each have their individual makers/masters who do a superb heat treatment....very similar to the area of strength that the Busse's have....and you can get technical on steel and say one is better than the other...but ultimately it is the knives which are made by which people judge the quality of the steel and the best knives always have excellent heat treatment.

My FFBM came with a perfect edge geometry for what it does....the edge was ground at about 25 degrees either side and whilst rough was razor sharp and could trim arm hairs comfortably. Somebody at Busse looks after the flag ship model carefully. These knives tested out of the box made Busse what it is.

But if you want smaller blades coming to you with the same performance leadership in their class you need to look elsewhere IMO. The best knives for cutting come out of Japan...R2, Cowry X, OU31, are all powdered metals surrounded with softer metals done in a damascus fashion so that the hard core is perfectly centred and protected by the softer outside layers which gives a tempering ability and performance ability in excess of anything else made....they also are used by masters who do their own heat treatment "masterfully"....and unlike the smaller Bussekin knives they come to you with an edge that is "perfect and life long"....these knives never need to be re-profiled...the edge just needs maintaining...not creating....and you can use these edges days on end and they just need to be "touched up".

If you want this type of performance with "made in the USA" stamped on it....check out the Devon Thomas damascus blades...his blend of steels and heat treatment match my japanese knives...but are not convexed...they are hollow ground...and certainly the one I have is my first choice for meat work.

However...Infi has tested better than anything else for chopping...and the other Bussekin steels are not far behind.

Wow, this thread has been great. Thanks to Vic and Northern1 and all you steel NUTS who love it and have got it bad! Its always a pleasure to read these posts!

The mystery is the Busse heat treat. I have long pondered how Jerry does it, then realize sometimes you just cant understand some things in life <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> and only purchase them. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

....................... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/paperbag.gif" alt="" />

Jerry never said that I did. Don't get pissy about it but strength and toughness are 2 different things when it comes to engineering and the characteristics of these steels are quite well known.

Strength is how much force a material takes before it starts to bend.

Toughness is how much it can bend before it is broken.

To actually find out what was stronger you would need to put 2 identical blades in a vise and put a torque wrench on them and see how much force needed to be applied before there was any change in the angle of the blade.

Strength and wear resistance tend to go together but when you increase those you lose toughness.

You are totally right Steelfan about the japanese having the sharpest, best cutting edges. They also tend to be harder and thinner as well which also really helps cutting but they give up a lot of toughness. The Katana had a much much better edge than a western sword and could if done with exceptional skill actually cut a western sword because it was harder ,stronger and very sharp. However if it was not a perfect strike the katana would break while the western sword would bend a bit but still be serviceable.

It is a question of priorities. The Japanese want the sharpest blades while westerners want the sharpest blades we can abuse without breaking.

While i agree that Busse are better at large blades INFI makes a fantastic bushcraft steel and I think Dan particularly is getting really into making knives that cut. The new CPM154 has tremendous potential in a thin Japanese style knife.

I have high hopes for the BirdDog and will thin mine out on the edgepro and really see how she handles. If it was not for that [censored] warranty they could make a very thin sharp blade of 154.

This was discussed on Bladeforums few years back. Fallkniven have never used INFI. I believe they may have tried to duplicate it and failed miserably.

The analysis of both steels shows that is incorrect though:
Infi:
V 0.36% Vanadium
Cr 8.25% Chromium
Fe 87.79% Iron
Co 0.95% Cobalt
Ni 0.74% Nickel
Mo 1.3% Molybdenum
C 0.5% Carbon
N 0.11% Nitrogen

A8:
Cr 4.75-5.50 Chromium
Ni 0.30 Nickel
Mo 1.15-1.65 molybdenum
C 0.50-0.60 Carbon
Mn 0.50 Manganese
Si 0.75-1.10 Silicon
W 1.00-1.50 Tungsten
Cu 0.25 Copper
P 0.03 Phosphorus
S 0.03 Sulfur

FYI, Jerry has confirmed that the analysis of Infi is accurate.

Since I am relatively new to Busses, I was not aware when INFI came out and I sometimes ask questions of the old Busse fans about it. I have only been on the internet since about 2005 or so. Most of my knives were the ones commonly available from catalogs like BQM, Cold Steel, or SMKW. I bought some of the early RTAKs and Ranger knives. Cold Steel was my intro into "high performance" knives with their Carbon V, which turned out to be a common Chrome-Vanadium cutlery steel with a special heat treat done by Camillus. I am no steel expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have used a lot of knives for a lot of years. I have been pleased with the performance of all the Busse kin knives I have purchased, and my only "complaint" is that they sometimes require quite a bit of edge work to bring out that performance. I was very glad when Busse came out with the CE versions. I'd like to see that idea expanded to SYKCO and the Swamp. The best knife steel on earth still won't cut if it is dull.