Frank B. 11" Italian Stiletto Swinguard Honey Horn Automatic Knife - Dagger

When I first received my knife, I was a bit disappointed, the blade was fine but the honey horn scales showed a bit of separation in the layers of the keratin. This lets air in and shows up as bubble like pockets, however small. I had written in my order that I was a returning customer and would like them to pick out the best one they had for me. A customer service rep did call me, told me he had what he thought was the best one, but that there were imperfections, as there are with all natural substances used and did I still want to purchase it. I decided to go ahead, thinking that as long as they were conscious of this, I would still get a good one. It was my first blonde horn, and when I first saw the keratin air bubbles I was very upset. I started pricing this knife on other sites, more expensive sites, and I noticed that all the pics of honey horn knives had the same keratin separation in their photographs. Knowing they would pick the best looking ones for pictures, I guessed the others they had were probably much worse. I went on to a blade repair forum and talked to a master smith about the problem I had, he told me it was perfectly natural and the imperfections could be buffered out with a very fine bar of magnesium metal, used like a sanding block but very gently, and that it would smell awful. It did smell awful, but I got the air bubbles out of the horn (always located near the edge, but the layers are so thin they are like rice paper) and now the knife looks beautiful. I still need to mirror polish the metal but there's no hurry. The swing guard blades and bodies are slightly bigger than bolster lever daggers or bayos, and the extra 1-1.5 mm, though not much, makes a big difference while holding it, making it feel much more expensive than what I paid for it. It's now my new favorite blade, probably the last one I can afford until graduation, but I'm happy with this to hold off collecting for a few months.