Beautiful piece. I have two suggestions to optimize the use as a chef knife: the guard can be uncomfortable for preparing food. Sometimes you need to slide your hands up to the blade and the guard can be somehow in the way.

Blade geometry: if you taper the blade so that the edge climbs towards the spine, leaving the handle aligned to the spine, it will give you clearance for your hand in order to not hit the cutting surface when slicing and chopping towards the heel.

I hope I explained myself correctly.

Impressive blade you have there!

Thanks Francesco!

Yes I agree. The handle came out a little more like a carving knife than what I was going for.

This is a prototype. The next one I'm working on has a similar construction and design, but I think I'm going to simplify the shape to be a little closer to a Japanese style handle but still have some little curves in it, and I'm going to make sure to chamfer the thumb area for a pinch grip.