Great Eastern Cutlery: #47 - Farm & Field - Hayn' Helper - OD Linen Micarta

The farm and field variety is thicker than the tidioute versions. I use hawkbills extensively at work for cardboard and at the house in the garden. I reach for this one when I want the thicker handle for gardening since I usually wear gloves. I use it to cut small limbs, weeds, mulch bags, and I even used it to lay carpet grass recently. It was perfect for trimming pieces to fit. I own this one and the white camel bone versions. Both are equal in fit and finish, the biggest difference is this one has a fatter handle.

Its a great quality knife, as with all GEC's. The overall fit and finish is excellent. The handles are hand done and with that, have a little bit of personality in that they're not quite the same on both sides but damn near close. The minor discrepancies aren't noticeable unless you're looking for them and even then, you forget about them pretty quickly because there really isn't anything bothersome to remind you, no flaws that stand out. The handle is comfortable and there are no hot spots. For average sized hands, it fits really well. Its just the right length, not to long, not to small. You can get a firm grip on it but its not a gigantic monster of a handle. As with all GEC's, the spring and liners are flush with the each other and the handles and have no gaps. The liners are nicely polished which is always a nice reminder that you're getting a quality, not something mass produced as efficiently as possible. The 1095 carbon steel takes on a patina really nicely and ends up looking like something you would expect an 80's farmer to be using. It takes a bit of patience to sharpen, especially considering its a hawkbill but in the end you can get it razor sharp. I used the edges of my sharpening stones for this knife and it ended up alright. As with most flat ground blades, the edge will be quite steep so its not great at something like shaving bits of things but you get good strength as a trade off. The tip is strong, it hasn't broken on me with reasonable abuse. The swedge is a really nice touch and does give the blade a better aesthetic. There's no blade play whatsoever and it has a perfectly fine walk and talk. It has a really satisfying snap when it opens and closes. When the blade is at its half stop, the spring stands proud a little bit which doesn't affect the functionality of the knife by any means but its a real sign of refined quality when its flush even at this point. When they designed the knife they hadn't really gotten any feedback about this as far as I'm aware but in their newer models they're starting to get that spring flush at the half stop. In the end, you'd be hard pressed to find a knife under 150 or even 200 dollars that has this flush spring at half stop made by any company so its not of any importance for 99.99999% of people. Obviously, with a hawkbill blade, you aren't going to be able to do all the things a blade with a belly will be able to do like food prep and chopping in general but what it can do, it excels at. The tip honestly doesn't even need to be sharp anyway because the shape of the blade sort of pulls everything along and into the curve of the blade so it cuts find like that even when dull. If its super dull, it will just rip through things easily. It didn't come super sharp. I personally enjoy putting my own edge on knives, especially traditional ones, because it gives it your own personal touch. Just be aware that you will have to spend some time working with the hawkbill blade. Wow this ended up being really long.