First off, thank you all for your responses, links and welcomes. I'll spend more time researching and thinking about what it is that i need. (keeping in mind that i like shiny's)
When I do finally make a purchase i will post and let you know which route i went.
Of cousre if you have other types or brands i should check out please post it here for me.
Thanks again!

D

Oh good lord, if that doesn't open up a floodgate. hahaha.

Uh-hem! Ravens like shiney. So long as it is functional shiney.

Me, I like a nice 1090 or 1095 carbon steel with a wood or leather washer handle in the five to seven inch range. Very shiney.

I have to admit, despite having a collection of fixed blades worth well over $2,000 right now, I have no use for any of them on a daily basis. Other than testing purposes, more than half have not been used for any sort of real service. Three are kept handy at home as self defense weapons (a big knife at close quarters on familiar ground is an effective defensive weapon, especially if you get the drop on the BG). Otherwise, my edc is usually my little Gerber shortcut, which replaced a SAK classic, or else occasionally my Leatherman Wave. Even in Iraq, a multi-tool was used by the soldiers much more often than any fixed blade they carried. When I asked what, other than melee, the fixed blades did get used for, most often it was as a pry tool, or to flip things over to look underneath (the idea being I suppose if something nasty was under there waiting for you, you'd already have the big nasty knife in hand and ready to go), or to cut open the MRE bags.

Most of the time I used mine to fend off offensive palm trees by throwing it at their trunks, hard. Palm trees, after all, are tough.

Benjammin, it must have taken some guts to admit that... I appreciate the honest to God confession.

I'm in the same boat after all, only that I primarily collect old military edged weapons. Dozens of bayonets, swords and kukris - many of them still serviceable - plus a few drawers of blades "meant to be used" that I've never used for anything actually. The only stuff that really sees regular service are my Endura, SAK, Leatherman Wave, black handle classic Kabar plus the puukko and kukri I made myself. In about that order. Everything else is just for show.

Oh, it's like most of my belongings I suppose. I could really do without 70% of the stuff around my house these days. Coming from a background where I had damned little for a time, I suppose it is a bit of an over-reaction now, and maybe some reaffirmation of my hard work generating more success than I probabaly deserve in my lifetime.

I suspect it's the same for many here. If nothing else, I can use the excuse that "it's better to have it all and not need it, than to need it and not have it." There's always a chance I may need a dozen really good fixed blade knives for something someday. In the meantime, I can sit with friends in my hooch sipping whiskey and admiring the collection I suppose. Heck, I may even end up giving them away as sacred gifts to those who someday might seek my approval/admiration and also have need of commemorating some accomplishment materially. I'd like to think such trophies have a practical side, unlike the plaques on the wall, but really, until they do get used seriously, that's really all they are.

This is Raven shiny-

http://www.wilsoncombat.com/kniveswt/wilsontactical/2008tacticalgrade.asp

Now this is the type i'm not looking for.

http://www.wilsoncombat.com/kniveswt/combatelite/cfs.asp

SECURITY!!!

"...do without 70% of the stuff around my house..."

Exactly! We have a ton of "stuff" in storage, waiting for us to give up the RV lifestyle. We have decided that keeping all that stuff is stupid, we don't need it now, so we probably won't ever. So the local SPCA (the only place to donate stuff in the county our house sits in) got a windfall. If you haven't used something in several months, you probably don't need it at all...

That is simply blasphemous

From an unrepented hoarder

Pete