The first thing you learn at a workbench is that geometry is a kind of patience. You can feel it in the second pass over the steel — when the file finally agrees with the angle you've decided on, the metal stops fighting and starts cooperating. It is unreasonable to expect anything else.
For the last six years I've been making a knife that I never quite finish. Not for sale. Not for a magazine. Just a pocket knife that's been on the bench since the week I moved into the shop. I sharpen it. I re-handle it. Sometimes I take the blade off entirely and start the bevel again from a fresh grind. It teaches me what I didn't yet know about geometry.
The angle
A 20-degree edge will slice an apple cleaner than a 17, but it dulls in half the time. The trade is permanent. Every degree narrower is a degree faster, and a degree more vulnerable. You don't get to negotiate with the steel — the steel negotiated this trade-off two billion years ago when it decided to be steel.
Most makers settle around 22 degrees on a pocket knife, which is the angle where the trade between durability and slice gets roughly even. I keep mine at 19. It's a bias I've earned through breakage. I'd rather strop it weekly and slice paper than carry an edge that survives me.
An edge isn't a line. It's an agreement between you and the next person who picks the knife up.
The grind
There are three grinds a serious pocket knife can wear: hollow, flat, and convex. Hollow is fast and surgical. Flat is honest and reliable. Convex is forgiving and survives use. I prefer flat. It's the grind that makes the most sense when you don't know who's going to use the knife in twenty years.
I learned this from my grandfather, who never wrote anything down. He kept his knives on a kitchen shelf above the sink, where they would catch the morning light when he made coffee. The blades were always flat-ground. He said hollow grinds belonged to people who only needed an edge for one season.
The handle
Titanium handles are the modern compromise — light, durable, and tonally consistent with whatever else you carry. Wood is warmer but moves with the weather. Bone is beautiful and brittle. G10 is correct without being interesting.
The titanium handle on the knife I keep finishing is from a single billet, cut and contoured slowly. It's heavier than a plastic handle by a few grams, but the weight registers in the hand the way a real object does. Anything less and the knife feels like a souvenir.
The whole thing weighs three ounces. It will outlast me by a hundred years, which is roughly the lifetime the warranty implies. I find that comforting in a way that no plastic handle has ever been comforting.