it's a beautiful knife, ridiculously sharp but the timber in the handle is a lot lighter than shown, looks like pine not hardwood as in the picture. that is the only fault but other than that it; is absolutely perfect!
Haven't tried to sharpen yet, but the knife is balanced perfectly in hand, the handle is nice and confy(bit slippery) - altought doesn't really feel like cork and the blade seems to be pretty hard, possibly similar to VG10