From what I understood, that sunbrite is their nifebrite with a yellow liner behind it. This would indicate to me that the glow in the dark is mixed into the acrylic, and a little sanding shouldn't really affect it. I don't own any of their sunbrite, so this is just a guess based on what I've read about it. As far as the etch, a little Flitz or similar polish would go a long way towards making that disappear. It'll still be there, but it'll fade it quite a bit. Once it gets a little bit of patina on it you'll have to look pretty close to see it at all.
As for me, I've spent a little time on my 77 barlow. My goal was to be able to pinch open the main blade. After playing with it for a while I wasn't sure I wanted to go the easy open notch route. It seemed like it might bother me when I was using the knife, so I was looking for alternatives. The first thing I did was to reshape the secondary into a wharncliffe. My goal was to increase the amount of steel I'm able to grab hold of on the main blade. I didn't touch the edge at all, I just rounded off the top of the blade.
This helped a little, but I still struggled to really get a hold of that main blade. At first I was going to shorten the secondary and reshape it back into a coping. This would have given me another 1/4" or so at the spine of the main blade to grab onto. Then I realized that with how high the coping blades ride on these knives I could just lower that down and get the same effect, so that's what I did. The secondary originally rode pretty much parallel to the main blade on this knife.
I don't have any pictures of both blades closed from before I started this project, but here's one with the secondary closed and the main at the half-stop. You can kind of get a feel for how high the secondary is riding.
It was definitely a lot easier to pinch open after working on the secondary blade. The last step of the project was a little filing on the tang of the main blade so that it's not such a hard snap into the half-stop. This lightens the pull a bit when you're first starting to open the knife, which is the hardest part when pinching it open. There was no rush, so I went a little at a time and used it for a couple days and then a little more. When I hit that point where it's easy to pinch open, but still has good snap it was done. It's still a little tough on the fingers if I open and close it a couple times in a row, but for pulling it out, using it, and putting it away it's just right.
I also rounded off the edges at the butt of the knife. I did this for two reasons. First, I didn't like the feel of the sharp corners during use. Secondly, when I first started carrying this knife I was using the CK slip it shipped with. The slip is great, but I had never used one before and wasn't used to it. I was in my basement and went to pull my knife out and the slip had kind of flipped so that it was almost upside down in my pocket. When I pulled it out the knife slipped out and fell onto the concrete floor, chipping the bone right at that edge. Rounding out the corner eliminated that chip.
I feel that this is as close as GEC's come to a perfect knife, and now that I can pinch the main blade open it's just a couple steps farther out ahead of the pack. This knife's been in my pocket every day since Christmas. I couldn't be happier with it.
