which means because I i getting a match for well over 50% of the
records...its disregarding it.
Yes, this is exactly the problem.
Now i am in two minds if i should use this or go back to the same old dirty
way...of exploding the search and using LIKE '%%' for each word
FULLTEXT searches are great; it's your testing of them that is poor. What validity is there is "searching" through X number of identical records? This isn't a real test at all. Also, FULLTEXT searches are improved as the number of __different__ records increase.
If you want to see some results, regardless of the 50% threshold, use the IN BOOLEAN MODE feature. Keep in mind, though, that in your case any search will return either 0 or 700 results.
Larry