I am happy to introduce a new style of construction, The Slip Lanyard guard full-tang design. It allows for a full-tapered tang knife to have a built in lanyard guard without having the complication of a mortised tang. These first prototype iterations employ a ductile iron guard which is pinned to the tang and then overlapped by the handle for a clean design. As with all things there is nothing new under the sun, and this may have been done before. This is just a design that came organically from what I wanted to accomplish.I will be exploring different materials besides ductile iron in the future.

Now to specifics. The blade is Damascus made by me comprised of 320 layers of 5160, 15n20, and 1075 steel 100% hand forged to shape, and fully hardened then differentially tempered which results in exceptional toughness.The blade is tapered from tip to heel for optimum balance.I chose olivewood for its toughness and beauty and it is epoxied and pinned with brass with a museum fit. This ensures that you will never be hindered by a sharp tang that becomes bothersome by shrinking wood which would leave it exposed. The sheath is 7oz vegetable tanned leather which is wet formed and hand stitched by me here in my shop. The finish is what I call “Pinto Bean” which is accomplished in stages.

The overall length of the knife is 9.5 inches. Tip to guard is 5.25”. Handle is 4.5” from front of guard to heel. Blade width is 1&3/8ths inches and is 1/8th of an inch thick. The overall feel of this blade is more compact and lends itself to feeling very nice in the smaller hand.