>>2586459The ESEE, but I hate their design ideology with the huge watermark on the blade. Always looked cheap to me. Anyway, their heat treat is great, but the steel (1095) is still nothing to get a boner over. Won't hold an edge for nearly as long as modern powder steels and isn't stainless, hence the coating. Lionsteels have other problems, primarily with blade geometry (way too thick behind the edge, making them really mediocre slicers) and their heat treat isn't as good as Rowen's (ESEE). Their "full tangs" are also really thin in the handle which creates a massive weak point, see Joe X's test:
https://youtu.be/sscuSivjqz0?t=825Personally, I'd check out Cold Steel's SRK, the Gerber Strongarm and Ontario SP1 and SP6, which are all very reasonable priced alternatives. Brandford's new 5.5 S in 3V also looks nice and is going to outperform every knife mentioned here in terms of steel.
