Here's what's technically my latest acquisition, at least for a couple of days ('til the next ones arrive), an Operator with Maple scales from Winkler Knives. According to the card that came in the box, it's 80CrV2 steel with a Black Oxide finish.
It's seen here next to my MKC Speedgoat in Magnacut. If the paracord lanyard on the Winkler looks familiar, that's because it's the paracord that MKC used to tie up the paper that was wrapped around the Speedgoat when it was packaged.
The two knives are surprisingly comparable. The Speedgoat's blade is 3-3/4" with an OAL of 7-34" and the Operator is 4-1/8" with an OAL of 9"; I didn't do a very good job of getting them lined up, but their lengths look a lot closer than those measurements. The Operator has thicker blade stock at 5/32" vs .095" for the Speedgoat, but they both have a distal taper out to a very acute tip. The Speedgoat has successfully "added lightness," and is noticeably lighter than the Operator, but Winkler doesn't list the knife's weight on their site, so I can't give you the tale of the tape on that count. (It's not like the Winkler is a porker, but the MKC is suuuuuper light.)
The Speedgoat is nominally a trailing point (there's just the slightest upturned curve to the spine) with a full-height flat grind. The Operator is best described as a drop point (the swedge makes it look like a clip point) with a nearly full-height flat grind. The MKC has a keener edge, and I think its thinner blade stock and slicker finish give it the edge as a slicer, but the Operator will certainly do.
Just looking at them, the Operator, with its thicker blade stock, looks like a harder-use knife, and it most likely is. MKC is going to be releasing new variants of its knives that are more "tactical," with military use in mind, but the Speedgoat is designed more with hunters in mind; the Magnacut is going to make it tough for its size, but it's primarily intended to be a knife that you pack into a wilderness area for dressing out game (which also makes it a great EDC knife), not for busting open crates or jabbing through rib cages.
Now for the sheaths. That's the plus and minus for the WK. I love the leather sheath that comes with the Operator. It looks amazing and it smells like baseball (the new fielder's glove, not the cart full of stinky socks and jock straps in the locker room). It has one of the better belt clips that I've seen on a sheath, and it's set up for deep pocket carry--if you have deep pockets. The sheath also has a screw to adjust retention pressure, which I don't remember seeing on other leather knife sheaths (though they seem to be common on leather gun holsters).
The sheath is also the one drawback--it's almost as long, by itself, as the Speedgoat in its Kydex sheath. Where the Speedgoat will basically hide under my belt, the mounting point for the clip on the WK sheath is near the top of the sheath. It's great if you want to pocket carry, as it sinks the sheath almost all the way into your pocket, but that means it sinks the sheath too far under my belt for the way I like to carry. It's also not configurable for anything other than vertical carry due to the way it's constructed. Winkler has two optional sheaths available, but I couldn't find pictures of them. For the Boltaron version, it says to see the Contingency page, but after I figured out that the Contingency is a model of knife, I discovered that closest thing it had to a picture of the sheath was one where the knife was sheathed...behind a chest rig, with only the knife's handle visible.
So, basically, for now, I can use it to replace the MKC Super Cub that I carry on weekends, but it can't really replace the Speedgoat as an EDC until I can get a different sheath for it.
The Winkler costs about $130 more than I paid for the Speedgoat, so is it worth the price difference? Yeah, it is. The Operator is a more refined knife; it's hard to compare fit between a hard-use knife with maple scales and a minimalist knife with a paracord-wrapped handle, but when I put it up against the Super Cub, there's just a little bit better integration of the handle into the shape--and it's not like the Super Cub is just knocked together in a sweatshop, either.
Now, to find a sheath for the Operator that will better fit my use case...
