Nicholas, I see good things here. Your blade finish and handle fit as well as material finish shows that you are giving this thing a lot of thought. But since you mentioned "design", I thought I might offer this:

First, I like where your design is going. I think you need to do one of two things as far as design. Either leave more width at the bottom of the ricasso Or narrow the handle a bit more on the bottom side to bring it into a better proportion and alignment.

Another suggestion. Draw the whole project first. Draw it to the proportions as well as details. You show us the profile in hand. Draw it that way. The profile. Then make the blade fit the drawing. Include the tang's position and how it relates to the profile, because there's a pin pretty far back and it needs to go through the tang. It's a mistake not to set it up with this in mind. That mistake can potentially influence you to raise or lower the handle in an attempt to keep the pin in the middle. Then the handle and blade are out of alignment.

The remedies for this is to draw the knife and to forge the tang with some width to it and drift it up or down to suit the drawing. This is done, of course, in the grinding process. So while we want to forge close, we cant forget to forge smart.

Thanks Lin! I'll keep that in mind for the next one.