Thanks javand, i do feel like i am getting there one knife at a time. What's wrong with the choil? Fit and finish will be the death of me haha. I cannot, to save my life, get the bolsters sanded perfectly even on both sides. I am still working on the bolsters right now as we speak.
Bolsters are tricky, especially if you haven't had anybody to "school you on it". One thing many of us have learned, be it for sculpting handles, or bolsters, or anything else where you've got to cut two symmetrical opposites, is to do it by "faceting" in steps. You can make this easier, by scribing a line (I do it by eye, but this will help until you're confident), with the liner inside laying flat on a surface plate, and with a height gauge scribe a line where you want the bottom of the bolster contour ground, on each piece. Then, rough grind the corners off the bolster almost to that line, at a sharp angle, around, on both pieces, basically cutting the corner off. Then cut the top corner of that angle you made, cutting the radius by "facets", this way you're just holding an angle, and cutting the high spots off, once you've got them all cut down and the basic shape right, the last step is to "blend" those facets to a consistent round. If you repeat the steps for each bolster on both bolsters at the same time, you should have no issue getting symmetry.
Trying to cut a full radius at once, is what makes it very difficult to get symmetry across both pieces. Although eventually, you'll be able to, and you'll skip some of those faceting steps, but even still I knock the corners off at a steep angle to the point I want the radius to terminate, then blend in the tops of the bolsters. Also, I recommend grinding the bolsters to the thickness you want first, flat, so that you're not trying to remove equal amounts of the top of the radius on each bolster, this is very difficult to keep symmetrical. In a perfect world you want to blend radiuses to the point that you're just "barely kissing" the apex of the radius on the top of the bolster.
As to the choil, well, I personally would like to see a nice sharp corner on the inside of the notch, and of course, try to have your bevel grind plunges terminating right at the notch, not running past onto the ramp. I cut my choil notch with a half-round needle file, with the half-round side toward the tip of the blade, before HT, but you can use a knife edge file or similar also for a different effect, or cut it with a stone.
