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I had the wonderful chance to take part in a knife passaround courtesy of Dan Koster of Koster knives this week and as part of the stipulations of the pass around I had to get some pictures and post them along with a brief write up.

The Bushmaster is not in production at this time and is only a PROTOTYPE, it may be part of Dan’s everyday line up, but only time will tell. The dimensions and specifications as posted by Dan are:

10″ overall
5″ blade = O1, hardened to ~59, full flat ground to a keen edge, as-forged flats
5″ handle = natural canvas micarta, aluminum corby bolts and lanyards

The passaround actually consisted of 2 Bushmasters, one with natural micarta handles and the other with ironwood as well as 3 different types of sheaths.

The nicest looking sheath in my opinion would be the fancier one with the styled design elements, that would be my first choice to be offered with this blade. Now onto the knives.

The blade shape is near perfect, I couldn’t ask for a better shape. It really reminds me of my Bark River Bravo 1, which is a big hit and one of BRK&T’s best selling blades. I have taken some comparison pictures along side the Bravo. The handles of the knives were shaped evenly, I preferred the ironwood over the micarta, but both of the handles were way to big for me. I think it was the depth that was too big for me. I think I was just getting too much bite from the micarta where as the ironwood was nice and smooth. A couple of differences between the two knives were obviously the handle material, the micarta had some thumb grooves and was full tang where the ironwood had a tappered tang. The natural canvas micarta handled knife came with some thumb grooves meant for a firesteel striker those are a must have, I could grip the handle and place my thumb firmly on the grooves for added traction. I would though make the section of grooves extend back closer to the hilt of the knife so I wouldn’t have to extend my thumb so far up the spine of the knife.

I was about the 8th person to do a bit a testing with these knifes so after the brief handling of them I checked to see if the sharpness had maintained throughout the testing. The ironwood one still shaved some hair from my arms where the micarta one didn’t. I chalked this up to people putting the micarta blade though the paces. I also noticed that there were some warping in 2 places along the edge that appeared to be from some sort of twisting motion. For my testing, I kept it simple and just cut down a piece of oleander (2-3″ diameter) using the ironwood blade and the Bushmaster bit into it pretty hard cutting it up quickly. I tried to make a feather stick, but oleanders suck for that so I moved on. I used the tip to drill through a 1/2 inch thick piece of hardwood bark which was no problem for the knife and there was no noticeable tip damage after the fact. This will be a good hard working knife and coming from Dan I’m sure it will be reasonably priced to boot.

Overall I really like the knives, my biggest concern was that the handles were simply to fat for me to use comfortably. The thumb ramp is a great feature, but should be lengthened or start closer to the hilt. The ironwood is gorgeous and that is the handle I would prefer. The stylized sheath is a thumbs up, the other sheaths were nice, but the stylized one would be my choice.

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