Steel Will Darkangel 900 Fixed Blade

Great steel, really good blade shape (flat ground), with a healthy thick spine, and handle has good ergonomics in the hand. The DLC coating on the blade is excellent. Only issues I had was slightly slippery in a sweaty hand. I remedied that with a couple of wraps of black bandage style grip tape. Also would have liked some light jimping on spine near handle. But that's nit picking.I think Bohlers' N690Co is an excellent steel. Up there with VG10 and ELMAX as a great all round performer. I'm not sure why, but Italians love to use N690c! I have 3 knives made in Italy, and they all use Austrian N690c! Perhaps Steel Will (USA) had Fox or Extrema (Italy) make it for them? I aint complaining at all, far from it, just curious as to why! I mean, I'd *love* to see TOPS start using it instead of 1095.Works great for self defense or as a camp knife. At 6 inches, alas, it was slightly too long to (legally) carry in public.Kydex blend sheath is actually really good. There has been a lot of good design decisions incorporated into it. I wish more companies would apply the same good sense to their sheaths.If you are looking for a good, solid, dependable carry/camp knife, this is a fantastic choice, and good value for money.

Nice knife - yea - use it for camping. Handle is sharp looking and grippy. It's not hard and cold like G10. It feels hard but has a touch of rubber in the formula. This is barely noticeable but really helps with the grip. Knife is lighter than it looks. Sheath is well made. However - it comes supplied with a Tec-Loc type of belt adaptor. This is absolutely worthless. It is impossible to align two holes up on the sheath to mount this thing to the clip. I asked the company for some guidance - haven't received any yet. Like I said - worthless. Too bad too. This mounting option is one of the reasons I selected this knife. In fact, as I write this I might just send it back because of this issue.

A little unwieldy.

Outstanding Knife, excellent steel. Arrived very sharp with bit of a toothy edge.Handle has good ergonomics but at first had a sort of greasy feel almost like candle wax. wiped it down with isopropyl alcohol which helped.Suspect the handle would be perfect if one were using gloves.The Molle carrier and real kydex sheath are a nice touch. The 2 snapps on the carrier strap closed much more easily after a bit of Nano-Oil on each.Almost launched the DOTS clip out of frustration as none of the round holes in the kydex appeared to match to clip hole arrangement.Finally noticed a video on Steel Will's website on the 'Reviews' tab for the knife page that showed the DOTS clip attached through a combination of the round holes and slots in the kydex. Note: If you use this method make sure you reverse the screw/nut if attaching using a slot as the nut has a wider flange head less likely to pull through the sheath than the smaller screw head. See attached photos. I added an extra black washer (not in the kit) to each rubber spacer to ensure the correct stand-off height from the back of the kydex sheath. This gives you a number of mounting options that never occurred to me until I saw the video.

What a beautiful and well made knife. It surpassed my expectations! For it's size it is very light, and easy to weld. The grind angle makes it a great slicer. The handle is not G-10, but is very sturdy. The N690 steel is reputed to be not just stainless, but stainproof, similar to H-1 but with better edge retention. It wasn't the sharpest out of the box, but after 30 minutes with a strop--while watching the news---it took an amazing edge.The sheath is really kydex--which is great because it doesn't dull the blade the way some glass filled fiber sheaths do. I'm not sure I get the reason for the two snap securing strap: the knife is really secure, but it is cumbersome to implement. Overall, the price/quality ratio is excellent, and I would highly recommend this knife to anyone looking for a medium sized all purpose knife.

I recently spent some time out in the woods in a simulated survival situation, and this knife worked beautifully. It's nice and sharp right out of the box, both the blade and spine shoot crazy sparks off of a fire steel, and the sheath is high quality and doesn't rattle or make any noise. Initially I didn't bother with the leg strap, but once I tried it I used it every time. It's annoyingly difficult to get both of the snaps that secure the handle to snap, but the knife seems to stay put just fine without them, and it's pretty easy to snap just one if you want extra security. It's a little on the big side for whittling and carving traps but it works. It also worked fine for butchering animals, but I bet filleting fish would suck (unfortunately I didn't manage to get any fish.) The size really comes in handy for processing wood, it's perfect for batoning and you can hack down a small tree in seconds. The tip is just barely fine enough for cutting zip ties and tight cord, but it does work and it's super tough. I didn't baby it at all and it's not chipped or damaged in any way. If you are carrying a knife just in case, this is probably a bit big, but it's perfect if you know you're going to use it.