Your thoughts on Case Genuine Stag?

[Modoc ED]

Ed, while I do agree with you about the quality of GEC stag versus other production knives, I think custom stag is a slight cut above. I'm sure Elliott could throw a few pictures in here to support my argument, but here is my only custom stag traditional, a John Howser 4" back pocket. You be the judge.

That's not fair. For me to say anything negative about your pictured knife would be rude and un-called for. That said, there is nothing negative to say about your knife. It is beautiful and the stag is stunning. However, I do not think that it is superior to much/most stag being used on GEC knives today.

 

[Mike Robuck]

Here's some production stag on custom knives. All three sets of scales were made from very old carving sets:

Stag on its way to being a custom fixed blade:

More custom stag:

Back in the day, quality knives, by Sheffield and some German companies, had bark stag all the way to the edge:

I'm not a big fan of the Case super chunky stag with just a little bit of coloring in the center. Aside of the embargo on stag, to really fit stag correctly it needs to be flat. (Case does this by cutting the ends at an angle on the chunky stag.) In order for stag to be flat it usually has to be a larger piece. (Kerry and I talked about this the other night.)

GEC has some great stag. So does Canal (Greg McKenna just posted up a nice one today.

Lastly, some friends hand picked this red stag for me and I really like it:

 

[Modoc ED]

All nice stag - stunning in some cases. The knife in pictures 7 and 8 is superb and the red stag in the last picture on the Case knife is probably the nicest piece of stag I've seen on a Case knife in a long time -- possibly the best.

Thanks for all the pictures Mike. I always like to see stag that is well done whether it be production or custom.

 

[Will Power]

Those two old stags are really sensational Mike, admired them before, hope to again!

 

[Kube]

Ok so I went with the stag sway back jack; really impressed by the stag (I was a bit worried), the front handle is really good, the other side is still nice but a lot thicker and a little more ground off by the bolsters: