My First Knife Build, Advice and Criticism Welcome

[Tanner Frisby]

I suspect your problems drilling the tang would be because the knife was already heat treated when you tried to drill it .
What did you do for heat treat ? ( just curious )
Its got an interesting guard .. I personally wouldnt have put a guard on a blade of that shape , just my personal preference tho .
Its an interesting mix of concepts , a tanto bowie with a kinda bayonetish kinda guard , what do you intend for it to be used as ?

As for my personal interest, I figure that I won't ever (or at least in a reasonable amount of time) be competing for the upper portion of the mirror polished, super long razor sharp edge holding, etc. market. So I am just going to make the coolest looking designs, with an average to moderate polished, super long razor sharp edge holding, etc.
After looking at a bunch of different "knives" via google, I picked my favorite few and started with somewhat of an end picture in my head.

 

[ElectrikHellfire]

Nice work! I might use nickle or steel for the guard as it looks like it may get bent. The design is really cool. Kinda a tanto bowie or "Bronto".

 

[marcinek]

Thanks for the comments, and I am still interested in advice, problem areas you see and an appraisal.

I applaud the effort and I always enjoy watching folks improve their knife making skills. I hope you enjoyed working on it. I'll throw out some general suggestions:

1) Go out and cut a lot of stuff with that knife. You will see what needs to be done with your next knife to make it a better tool. You are probably seeing that already with the difficulty you had cutting the watermelon.
2) Think about what you want everything on the knife to do, rather than how you want the knife to look. What does that guard do?
3) Don't try to reinvent the wheel.

Have fun, and I very much look forward to seeing your next knife! (Can I suggest a 4 inch blade full flat ground drop point?)