There are lots of great makers that can produce nice knives. If you want some names send a PM to me.
(Sorry, my initial suggestion was intentionally vague)
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This thread got me googling about blade steel. I'm not up to speed on the new stuff. Found a really interesting page on the Benchmade site. Scroll down for the short explanations of the various exotic steels they are using and further down for some interesting explanations of handle material.
Materials
Good looking and feeling knives, but I've never owned one...yet. Loveless ones are nice too...
Yeah, the benchmade that I have has the N680. Its one of their first triage knives that they made with a pry tip #61 of 1000. Like I said that knife has held up to a lot of abuse from cleaning gunk off of props and jet drives and scraping a few barnacles here and there, cutting open coconuts, heck I've even used it to cut small cable with a hammer to add the force. As you can tell I didn't care that it is part of a limited run or whatever. Its held up a lot and has some more time to it but it was also $160 bucks. I would keep buying that knife and maybe treat it a little better but it is made like a kamisori where the blade is only sharpened on one side and I don't know if it from the abuse I have put it through or what but it seems like the blade curves very slightly to the right and I am pretty sure that was intentional. You can barely see it unless you stare at it for awhile. Also another reason I don't want to get that same knife again is that I am wanting a dive type knife with serrated teeth on the top edge and continuos edge on the bottom, not both on the same edge also I want something a little longer around the 6-7" blade length.
Unit- I will pm you about the knives. I am a little dense when it comes to vagues suggestions haha.
Shooter-I will look at loveless blades.
Saw this and had to dig out these oldies.
top is a custom #12 Randall
bottom is a Joseph Allen & Son
Attachment 139117
Still use both now and then.
V/R
Tim