runningboar, I believe I understand what you're going for, and I like it a lot. Since you want a barb, not a gut hook, I'm thinking it would be best to keep that channel or gap fairly narrow. The top profile of the drop point, and the top of the barb, looks about perfect to me. Same for the blade edge. If there was more "meat" left in the blade, I bet it would be a lot stiffer and the barb would be very effective. It looks almost like you ground that out? A hacksaw or band saw... on thin stock like that, maybe even a cut-off wheel on a Dremel... would let you get it a lot closer, then you could use triangle or flat files to clean it up nice and smooth. Maybe a couple smaller barbs, leading back towards the spine? (Damn, this would be a lot easier if you could see the notebook I'm sketchin' in ) In any case, your design fits right in with other great ideas on this forum lately, for brazenly functional tools, with a strong emphasis on economy of design and materials, making the most of less. I like it!
I gotta say, you could not have chosen a better starting point than a good-old-fashioned, plain carbon steel, kitchen utensil. The kind of knives that won the West... and before that, the East. Looks like the original holes in the tang have served you well... if I may say so, that's a fine bit of Yankee ingenuity
Chris
