Böker110084DAM Leopard Damascus I with Steel Blade

I purchased as a gift . The quality is top notch. This is one beautiful knife.

INITIAL IMPRESSION:Handling this knife can both upset and cure knife collectors as it resets their expectations, showing the folly of paying four times as much for custom folders with lavishly decorated handles mated to metallurgically-inferior undistinguished blades... This knife feels practical, yet also has class and fundamental rightness all too rare. At 4.4 oz. this knife is light, primarily due its light but stiff T6 -aluminum handle. The highlight, however, must be the 3 3/8" drop-point slender blade, with stunning Damascus pattern Boker calls "small pyramid", but commonly known as "small rose", with densely and consistently arranged layers and the holographic sheen off rhomboid lattice clearly visible from afar. Sophisticated is the word that best describes this knife. I initially gave the knife five stars.THE FOLLOWING UPDATE DETAILS THE REASON FOR DOWNGRADE TO THREE STARS:I returned my knife despite liking it's beautiful patterned blade and great overall balance.Because I encountered a design flaw that for me was too great to ignore and impossible to rectify - a rare occurrence for a German-engineered product indeed! Notably, the subsequently released Leopard Damascus 2 and 3 and Tirpitz knives do not have this issue, either because they were designed by another designer, or because Boker was made aware and remedied this design flaw in it's subsequent models. So what was it that I found so annoying?- There was a noticeable blade play when blade was laterally loaded from the tip (but not from the mid-section).in other words, if you held the knife by the tip of its blade and gave it a shake, you would feel a distinct rattle within pivot assembly, as the pivot was unrestrained and was opening up! On inspection I found that the blade stop-pin was free-floated (which in itself is a good practice), but there was nothing else in the immediate vicinity of the pivot to counteract the sideway lever action of the blade and keep the handle-scales together. The only screw that actually holds the entire handle together is located at the far end of the handle!This regrettable functional flaw does not diminish the beauty of Leopard Damascus blade one bit. Overall, I still like this knife and will consider buying it again in the future, if only to complete my Leopard Damascus collection. But for now, the pronounced rattle of the blade that I traced to the freely- splaying pivot, prevents me from recommending this knife to anyone intent on actually putting it to any use.I doubt that the pivot would ever open up enough for the blade to actually snap out of the handle, but this whole situation could have been easily remedied with an addition of another tie-pin in the vicinity of the pivot, which would have restored rigidity and stability to the handle, and the five stars to this review.