I looked at and drooled over the F1 for a long time, before deciding to go for the WM1.
And although everyone might look at me weird, cause i`m a guy, and the WM1 is a "woman" knife. Well.. It`s the knife i have on me at all times. It`s lightweight, so i don`t even notice it`s hanging from my pants, until i`m halfway into town. And let`s just say that carrying a knife in Norway is the biggest no-no you can ever commit.
So i just slip it quietly and discreetly into a pocket on my jacket. It`s small, but it`s well up to most tasks you can throw at it.
True, it`s VG10, so no carbon, but i`ve handled plenty of carbon steel knives that don`t hold their edge half as long as this one. And i`ve thinned down the angles on mine so that it`s a slicer. Which one would think, would make the edge less stable, but not in my experience. (Your experience may vary, but it was incredibly slicy out of the box aswell, so there was no real need to thin the bevels.)
In closing, i was also, like you, out on a quest to find the "perfect" knife. And i can say, without a doubt, that the WM1 isn`t far from being that knife. The only thing i`ve noticed is that the handle is a bit too thin for my liking, which i`m planning to rectify by putting my own scales on a bare blade i got a while back.
So, if you don`t have to have carbon steel, then try a WM1.
If you need carbon steel, then... Uhmmm... I really don`t know what to say.
The F1 is my idea of a "perfect" knife, but can't really help, nothing comes to mind (lol). Maybe a mora? Ontario RAT-3? Cold Steel Master Hunter CV (admittedly larger)? You could try the custom route, like a Koster Bushcraft or a Skookum Bush Tool.. etc.
