>>273638They're the only way to make a good knife if you can't heat treat the steel yourself.
Making and fitting the handle properly is arguably the hardest part of making a knife, so you can get cheap $10 blanks to practice with.
I've not seen a blade blank priced at over about $15 that wasn't a good blade.
You can use whatever you want for handles (like the corian countertop material above or the buffalo horn on the same blank here) and change the handle shape however you want to.
Don't know of any cons. Even the cheap blades I finished out when I was first learning seem to have done well for the people I gave them to.
