Mine came in today and I’m very pleased with it. I’ve never had a custom knife, but this is what I think a custom would be like. The knife is great and I really like my covers. The pile side on mine reminds me of mammoth bark.
I think we chose well this year. Thanks for putting this together, Mike.
Absolutely stunning !
Thank you. My first rams horn knife, and I’m very happy with it. My first “modern traditional” and first m390, as well. Hopefully I can get some better pictures outside tomorrow.
Excellent craftsmanship all around! 
I am very much enjoying seeing all of the variation being shown here. There seems to be a bit of a tan-colored polishing compound embedded in some of the nooks and crannies of the ram's horn. It's far more visible to the naked eye on the darker ones, but can be seen on the lighter ones as well, if you look closely. It's especially noticeable under magnification.
I'll report back about how the clean-up goes... 
I've been fondling these bad boys since last night!
My only nitpick...
Now that I've noticed it, I'm a bit distracted by it. Going to try and figure out a way to remove it. Think I'll try removing the covers first, and giving them a light scrub with warm water and dish soap. Maybe a little acetone on a swab after that if it doesn't work.
Best photo I have seen showing this, and it happens to be on a lighter one, courtesy of @Archie:
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You can see a little bit of the polishing compound at the bottom of the valley I circled, on top of the darker colored highlighter in the ram's horn.
Other than this, fantastic knives!!!
Yeah, it's very tough material. (Watch Rocky Mtn. Bighorn Sheep do their thing and tell me that it isn't pretty tough, lol.) Horn is modified hair essentially, so anything you'd use on hair would be fine on horn. I'm looking for a stiff toothbrush to try and use. First scale came off easily.
Dawn dish soap, hot water, and a toothbrush removed all the polish from the horn pretty easily, without a lot of scrubbing. The scales (especially the show side) look a good bit different now. All of the finer light-colored streaking in the grain is now gone. Overall, this looks better IMO.
Happy to report that the cleaning went very well!
Pros: No fine, light-colored streaking in the dark horn. Looks much better I think.
Cons: The polish does fill in some of the deeper grooves, which gives the surface a nicer, smoother finish, in both feeling and look.
The show side of mine was fairly flat, and after removing the polishing compound, you can see that the actual fibers of the horn were not polished too well, so much of the glossy look is gone. The pile side was polished much better, and retains most of the glossy-looking finish without the lighter-colored streaking.
If I had my druthers, I would have preferred that Viper used a darker-colored polishing compound on the darker horn material which would have blended better. I generally prefer the smoother, glossy feeling that the scales had with the polishing compound still present. But the streaky look bothered me once I realized what was causing it. For this reason, I elected not to remove the polishing compound from the lighter colored knife I have, as the polishing compound does not distract from the look like it does on the dark one.
Here are a couple poorly-lit pictures of the results (and the as-received pics from earlier, for easy comparison). I'll get better photos tomorrow in the natural light.
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I don't know about that RickRailsplitter . I remember back when Mike
knifeswapper started dabbling with these torx screw modern type knives, he said to be darned careful if trying to disassemble one of them as they don't necessarily go back together as easy as you might think.
SpyderPhreak
- great job, that does look very good
knifeswapper
/ Viper would confirm.
