As you might already know Busse Combat Knife Co. discontinued Mean
Street in 2001. So the last ones produced were in 2000. Lean Mean Street is a special run. Sort of farewell to Mean Street. It was a good knife and will be remembered in the
hearts of all true knifenuts and Busse knives enthusiasts. Sigh.
Now back to Lean guy. Basically it was Andy Prisco's idea to produce a special run of Lean mean street. As one gentleman on www.bladeforums.com noted, only at Busse's 3/16 can be considered lean :) Anyways, the knife is just cool :) The only thing I'd like in it more would've been
the satin finish, but it's fine with the crinkle one too :)
Basically there's almost no difference between the standard Mean Street and LMS except the thickness, 1/4 and 3/16 respecitively. Being
a thinner knife, LMS is lighter and more aggressive as a cutter, yet has more than plenty of toughness for prying or even light chopping. For the knife this small that's a lot.
General
- For comparison I've shot a picture of both Mean Streets together. Later on, I'll put a better picture :) Plus a here's a shot of both blades from the top. As you can see on these pictures there are several differences. LMS has more rounded belly, MS is more pointy. Handles are different too, for that my MS is the older generation knife, with the scerws.In short I like both knives a lot, though generally I'd rather use LMS for conventional tasks for the knife of that size :) It's lighter, more convenient & better slicer/cutter due to its reduced thickness, however MS has its use too. If you have to have only one knife on your camping or backpacking trip or wherever, probably you'd want to take MS, (sharpened railroad spike as one said ;) since it has extra toughness for heavy duty use, especially prying.
Miscilaneous
- So far I haven't had a chance to use LMS on smoething more or less serious cutting task. It came razor sharp out of the box, having the Busse semi-convex (asymmetrical) grind. For those who doesn't know this is a special grind that all of the Busse combat line knives come with. I wrote about in several reviews Steel Heart II for example and you can find more info regarding at Bladeforums and Busse Combat Knives Co. web site. Same about Busse proprietary, famous, INFI steel of which LMS is made. Very good blade steel by very good blade maker ;) What else would you want to be happy :)Specifications:
- Model - Lean Mean Street
- Blade - 88.90mm(3.5")
- Thickness - 4.76mm
- OAL - 215.90mm(8.5")
- Steel - INFI steel at 58-60HRC
- Handle - Micarta
- Acquired - 04/2001 Price - 250.00$
- Warranty - Unconditional Lifetime;
Last updated - 05/19/19