On the bench: Some progress on my new bushcraft knife

 Mustered some precious little time and worked on my new bush blade... just some refining the grind, some polishing and cleaning up the tang... and  a bit of filework. Blade is some mystery stainless steel with an exceptionally fine grain. I first thought it to be 440C or even Niolox, but the more I think about it the more I have to admit I can´t make heads nor tails out of it. I daresay it has a hardness of about 61, while being flexible enough to take a beating. It carves mild steel rods. Chopping antler dented the blade a bit, but then the edge angle was just 10°, so I modified it to a more robust 15°. The grind is a high convex bevel, now with the tiniest of a secondary edge.

 Sorry for the lousy pic of the gimping... The tang holes are hot - punched through to save me the costs of ten glass drill bits... ;-) Blade is 5mmx118.

I am currently thinking hard about what scales to fit. I had prepared some elk antler scales, but alas, they simply do not seem to fit the bill. There also is some birchwood burr and I am also contemplating some yew, bog oak, ebony or spindle wood scales... still thinking. I am taking my time with this one. It might as well be the last knife worth noting for a long time... for it´s that time again when I have to move on or think everything anew, so there might be no smithy in the future.