The RC-6 continues to get steady time in my pack. I say pack, because I prefer a smaller belt knife (3-4") for carry on person and an a do it all camp knife in the pack that usually replaces my axe. My axe only comes when when I know I'm going to be involved in some serious wood gathering.
As to the 3-4" belt knife, I often carry the RC-3 or 4, but I also have a wide spectrum of custom knives that I bring along. I like to rotate that smaller one often and try different ones out.
For the RC-6, initially it was a competition between it, Bk-7 and SOD. The BK-7 was traded, the SOD lives much of its life on a shelf. The RC-6 gets pack time. I really like the size of the handle. I will criticise it slightly in feeling a bit block sometimes, more curvature would be better. I only say this after logging lots of time using it. The blade is so nicely balanced it is a joy to work with. Kitchen camp, prying fatwood stumps, cutting out tinder fungus, batoning firewood. My RC-6 gets all the nasty work and it keeps asking for more.
The coating on my RC-6 is holding up remarkably for having it over a year and seeing as much batoning (which scrapes coatings away like nobodies business). The coating has that glossy look in the center of the blade and really only a scratch here or there and the loss of coating at the spine/blade edge are noticeable. I keep the edge convexed with a micro bevel. Performance of the steel is excellent as come to be expected with RC-knives.
I see many folks in other places of BF and other forums deriding RC products for their so called 'high-cost' for what is usually described as a mundane steel - 1095. To my mind, 1095 ranks about as a good as a steel gets for a do it hard, beater knife. If RC give me a choice of 30 steels, I'd still choose 1095. I'd choose 1095 over A2, O1 and 5160 any day. You couldn't get me to buy a 6" stainless knife.
The only problem I have with the RC-6 is it pretty much shut the door on mid-sized knives for the future. I have a very high end custom 7" blade by Rick Marchand that gets equal time, but I simply don't see myself every buying a knife in this size class again. This is coming from a guy who has 13-15 smaller (2-5" customs). After going on a big purchasing bin in 2007-2009, buying and trading about 30 knives or so, RC-products are the only production blades left in my collection. Most of my productions have been traded off as many of the customs I bought. I still have a bunch of customs in the small size category and a few larger choppers, but I rank the RC products every bit as unique and high performance as the best of my customs that I still retain.
