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Pros: Handle Material, Overall Quality, Blade Material, Finish
Cons: Weight, Sheath/Scabbard
Designed for hard use
This is my first Esee knife. It is executed to be very durable for hard use. It is pretty thick behind the secondary bevel in order to provide more support for the edge. The secondary bevel is at a slightly larger angle but still sharp. It is more of a durable chopping edge than a fine slicing blade. The steel does not seem to be super hard, probably to avoid chipping and breakage. It seems to take a little extra work to sharpen than lower grade steels but it is not too difficult. The balance point is at the tail end of the screw hole by the normal finger grip location. This makes it feel like the weight is in the handle rather than the blade. If you move up to the forward finger choil, there seems to be a significant weight to the handle. The grip is comfortable in both positions. The nice contours of the scales are just thick enough. Overall, the fit and finish are very good with only a couple of sharp spots on the handle at the blade interface that could use some hand finishing but they do not impact the normal grip. The sheath is nice but the clip plate makes the blade ride very high on your belt and is unfortunately well below the balance point making the whole thing want to tip rather than ride nicely. This is reasonably good value for the money given the excellent Esee warranty.