Miguel Nieto Warfare 5

When I first looked at the Warfare 5 from Miguel Nieto SL in Spain about 6 months ago, my immediate impression was that it looked a bit like a butcher's knife but with that fancy guard region.
This is a budget knife selling for around an incredible 30 Euros on the net, that's about $34 USD!!!.

So does this mean this knife is shit? No WAY!!. For a start I have many knives using the AN58 steel and all of them hold an edge very well and have a Rockwell of approx 58-60 according to Nieto and they have actually undertaken independent University tests (The Science and Engineering in Materials College of Castilla-La Mancha University) on this steel, with the following elemental key composition based on this University analysis:

C 0.45
Si 0.34
Cr 13.5
Ni 0.12
Nieto heat treats at 1,060 C and tempers at 350 C for 3 hours to achieve a HRC of 58-60.

The warfare 5 is designed with a hollow grind for excellent cutting, with a sheet thickness of 4.3mm or 0.2" thickness at the spine. It's a full tang knife. The centre of gravity or the fulcrum sits behind the guard.

Full tang knife with aluminium inserts

This is my second Nieto knife with this funky kind of guard. So how does it work and does it work? It allows an up close (to the blade) grip on the knife. Make no mistake this area has aggressive gimping and those with woosy soft skin beware LOL!

This model is features the cheaper Forprene all weather handle. The nature of tis Forprene  formulation makes the surface a little slippery when used with wet hands but the deep ridges (2 per side) allow ones fingers to maintain a good grip if used with wet hands.
There are excellent positions for the thumbs (crescent shaped indents at the front of the scales X2) in order to manoeuvre the Warfare 5 with blade facing uppermost, a common position when skinning. 

Forprene scales

Undersurface of handle.

I could shave (dry) the hairs on my legs with this knife how it came out of the box. 
The butt end features a nice rounded pommel so as not to hurt the palm of your hand should you wish to apply pressure to this region.

The grip is very comfortable when bashing around with this knife and that's simply because these polymers like Forprene absorb a lot of vibration/shock. Pushing down hard without gloves on to do the above yielded no hot spots from this handle.

Anyway, I've just finished abusing a knife entitled "Warfare 5" as I figure if you give a knife a name like tis you had better have produced a product that can live up to that name and everything it conjures up. I'll let you in on a secrete, so far the abuse has had no effect on the functionality of this blade! 

Stay tuned!

BCT