Cutting Comp knife design/balance questions

[TikTock]

I am a good way into making a competition cutter and so far have the blade almost fully ground pre-ht. So far I have stuck as close to the max guidelines as possible, with a 1/4" thick O-1 blade, 10" tip to scale front, 5" handle for 15" OAL. Blade is nearly 2" wide in the sweet spot, tapering a bit thinner at the ricasso.

I am making this full tang with an integral guard in the scales. I have skeletonized the tang fully and moved the balance point about 3.5" in front of the choil.

Questions:
Balance point: In a perfect world, where will I want the whole knife to balance? I could probably move the balance point to within 4" of the tip with some creative skeletonizing (Read: hacksaw out sections to make a framed tang).

Spine: Do I want some sort of false edge? My grind is currently full to the spine for the length with a distal taper beginning about 1/3 back. How about fully radiusing the spine? I have seen cutters in both styles. I am not a big fan of false edges, for the record, but want to do it right. Ive seen some with and some without...was thinking the main advantage may be in weight reduction and reduced drag?

Drop: Do I want to drop the point lower than the midline of the blade to throw weight for chopping towards the belly of the blade? What fraction of blade height do you guys usually drop for a heavy chopping/cutting knife?

Scales: I plan on using 3/8" g10 for the scales, sanded to a rough 180-320 grit for grip. I was thinking of them masking off a few sections and applying a rubberized bed liner for trucks for added grip...No wood on this one!

Any answers or insight would be great!

[lwrhea]

TT, Roger Pinnock wrote one of the BEST articles on the subject of Comp knife design. Actually it was a two part article in the recent Blade Magazines. He did a detailed and hands-on study of the evolution of knife design based on Dan Farr's competition knives. Dan helped me a lot concerning ergonomics and funtion of these knives. You owe it to yourself to read these articles. Lin