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Pros: Blade Material, Blade Sharpness, Finish, Handle Material, Materials, Overall Quality, Sheath/Scabbard, Weight
Cons: None
Better than you think
I bought this knife mostly to see how I liked the Elmax blade steel. But when it came in the mail I realized I had received one hack of a study in perfection! The finish was amazing. The grind lines, the finish of the steel, the shaping of the handles was all a level above what I'd seen in most knives. The heat treatment on the steel gives it an edge retention like nothing else I've known. I ran a test carving flakes off a fatwood stump. Running equal cuts with knives in 8cr14mov, 1095 and aus10. I quit the test when I just couldn't cut anymore with the 8cr14. My test was easy enough. I cut paper lol. The elmax didn't even need to be stropped. The other 3 I stropped and tried to cut with no luck. All 3 had to go back to the stone to get back to cutting shape. I've had it for more than a year now and have abused it a lot. But it still hasn't been back to the stone. With regular stropping with diamond stropping compound, I can still cut shapes in paper freehand. There are a couple things I felt necessary to fix however. The first was the slippery nature of the handle scales. They were sanded and buffed until they had a nice shine. While it looked great, it was slick. As these knives don't have much to prevent your hands sliding over the blade, I opted to give them a rough sanding for traction. I think it still looked ok, but now I'm more confident when handling. The second problem was the sharp corners at the front of the handle on the blade itself. When pushing hard to corners would dig into my fingers, and even drew blood once. I like a crisp spine, but in hotspots some rounding would be nice! So I used a diamond file to round off the edges. Now it's ready for hard use! The sheath it came with is sexy and very well made. At first I was a bit worried it wouldn't retain as well as it needed, but that has proven to be a needless concern. I like that it has a short loop, or the dangler. I live in an area with very cold winters, so the dangler gets the knife below my jacket, and the short loop keeps it tight to my side in summer. The looks of the knife and sheath don't seem to alarm the gentler people, so it's a good knife to wear when I go to town. All in all I've fallen in love with this knife. If you are thinking about it, take a leap, you won't be disappointed. I'm thinking of buying the full grind version next!