It is a chisel grind. It is ground on one side, and not ground at all on the other. Some of the coating it just removed from the other side so you cut with the steel and not the "Black T" coating.
Some people love chisel grinds, and some hate them. They can be very sharp, and are strong towards the end of the final grind. The downsides are that they can be weaker at the very edge of the grind, and can be hard to make long, straight cuts with because the amount of friction on each side of the blade is different.
I am in the middle. I like chisel grinds but don't love them. Most of the time, I can't really tell the difference when cutting. Emersons sure are sharp, though.
Emerson's liner locks are pretty good. They have had some quality control issues in the past with their locks, but they are reportedly pretty consistant now.
My experience with Emerson's liner locks is that they start out barely engauging the tang, but that this is to account for wear. A few hard waves and the contact will be more full. After some breaking in, the lock will stop moving across the tang at a noticable pace and the wear will virtually stop and settle into a normal wear-life for a liner lock. I have found many Emerson locks stick a bit to the tang, but this doesn't bother me too much. I feel it will also go away with some wear as the surfaces become more polished.
The liner lock on my Super CQC7 started out exactly like yours. The edge of the tang was right in the middle of the liner. After some hard waves, it looked like this:
And now it doesn't seem to be moving no matter what I do.
The lockup is good, but you can see that the liner and tang do not mate perfectly along what is the "bottom" side in the picture.
