The pics are from few weeks ago when my Scrapizashi arrived. Thankfully the ground is still covered in snow right now. Sometimes we get a melt off in December, just in time to have a brown Christmas (I hate it when that happens).
Anyway, the knife.
Initial impressions.
The chord wrap feels very good in hand, not quite as nice as Resiprene-C, but it does the trick. It was about -10C when I took the pics and whacked some sticks up, the handle feels very well insulated. No heat loss from the tang.
It doesn't absorb shock quite as well as Res-C, but it's a far cry from the jarring you get with an exposed tang. After the cord wrapping slid around a bit I noticed the fiberglass underneath. Pretty neat. The handle is reasonably filling, and initially I hadn't thought plain cord wrapping on a bare tang would be good enough, I guess this is the answer. The fiberglass core probably contributes to the scrapyard philosophy of still being able to use your knife if the handle comes apart, just in case.
I didn't do enough chopping to make any concrete statements on the abrasiveness of the cord wrap, or long term comfort, but it seems very usable for the time being.
Here's the handle wrap slipping after a few minutes of chopping, with and without gloves.
(I'll just gorilla glue it back in place)
My Tank Buster in its' element. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />