There is no avoiding sour grapes.

A year ago I was complaining that I couldn't order a Camp Tramp (not very loudly).

As for replacing a Battle Rat, I think the Dog Father might just have gone past the optimum size and heft for a chopper while the Battle Rat is just about perfect.

I'm sure you will find time for both.

I figure 10" for a knife is about as big as you want to go before it becomes a heavy machete.. The DF should be great fun!

As for replacing a Battle Rat, I think the Dog Father might just have gone past the optimum size and heft for a chopper while the Battle Rat is just about perfect.

I'm not following. The BR is 9 1/2" long; the DF is 10" long. Is 1/2" going to make that big of a difference?

No, the difference is bigger than that. I just measured pure edge on my old Battlemistress, my new battlemistress and my Battlerat. Both BM's are nearly 1.25 inches longer in blade length. That is from where the edge starts at the ricasso. So they have 15% more edge.

If you measure the Battlerats edge it is actually 8 inches. The BM's are 9.25 inches of edge length. The Battlerat has more steel between the end of the handle and the beginning of the edge than the BM's. 1.25 inches of edge is a lot.

So if the DF is similar to the old BM's in length I would prefer that.

Interesting. I just measured my Battle Rat and my Ranger RD9 (these were made from 5160 using the old SHBM as a blank). There is definitely a difference if you measure from tip to the start of the edge - I got 8" for the BR and a little over 8.75" for the RD9. However, from tip to the start of the handle, both were almost exactly 9.5". As you said, the choil and ricasso accounts for the difference. Not sure how much difference this results in for chopping performance.