zox

The workmanship is amazing. Truly a custom masterpiece. Now personally I'm not a buyer of Damascus knives - I veiw them more as showpieces than working knives, and I prefer working knives. But everything about this knife is showpiece quality: the handles, the rivets holding the handles on, the crossguard. As far as design, I absolutely *love* the 5" figheter or chute knife. I like the general design of this one, but think you should have gone into one of the two directions you point at on this knife. One directio would have been a true symetrical dagger design. It's *so* close to that, but not quite there. The other would have been a more typical "single sided blade with large edge on back of the blade" (a 'real' false edge - sorry my knife terminology is not as good as it should be). Instead it's kind of 1/2 way between those two, and it looks awkward to me for it. To me the classic is the latter - look at the Randall Model 15. That's the basic idea: it's a bowie-esqe single sided with a good sharp 1/2 edge on the back, but still retains the chunkyness of a single sided blade.

The fellow who makes the "Eagle's Talon" which is used by our soliders in Afghanistan and Iraq for a variety of very hard tasks speaks very highly of 4140 on his web site. He has less success with 1095. Of course his axes also include the handle. They are forged, not just stock removal.