the steel is solingen stainless (recycled an old meat cleaver for the steel) and it's about 3/16 thick.took about 45 minutes to drill the holes for the pins and 5 hss 1/8th" drill bits,overall length for the knife is about 11-12 inches (tape measure is out in the garage and i'm being lazy right now).as for beating the snot out of it,definatly!!!!! Now all i have to do is decide if i'm going to keep it for an edc or sell it (quite the difficult choice might i add)