I've been doing a bit of sketching and believe I have decided on a design. While speaking with my buddy, I asked him what type of knife they wanted, a combat knife or a practical utility design. He told me they were more interested in a smaller practical utility design which would be light weight and easily accessible.
My intent is to make the blades of 1095. I know there are some really awesome steels available, but for a hard use knife I feel 1095 will do well for the task. Several other soldiers and I who are avid knife nuts and users have had alot of discussions over the past year or so about knife steels and though we all love more modern air quench steels (ie. CPM 154CM, 3V, S30 and 35v etc), we find that 1095 is much easier to maintain an edge on with limited resources. The down side of course is oxidation in adverse weather conditions. Luckily, all soldiers carry CLP in our weapon maintenance kits and it works wonderfully for preventing rust on a blade. I've used it on all of my carbon blades on my three deployments with very minimal oxidation of the steel. I will etch each blade in FC in order to force patina the steel which should help as well.
For sheaths, I will be using Kydex. I'll have to play with the design a bit, but my intent is to build two sheaths for each knife. One sheath will be set up with a Tek-Lok to where the knife can be easily carried while not in full battle rattle and the other will be set up to be mounted center mass on their kit. I have some new gadgets I picked up that I'm going to try to incorporate on the sheath for their kit and hope I can pull it off.
The design I have come up with is a modification of a knife I built for myself a couple of years ago (which is the same design I modified for the first KD Military Build). The dimensions and details of the design are as follows:
OAL: 7.25"
Blade: 3.25" (5/32" 1095)
Handle: 4" (brown canvas Micarta)
I'm sure I will have some tweaking to do with the design once I begin working on the prototype. As I make modifications, I will update with photos. Now I have to inventory supplies and see if I have everything needed for the project. I know I need to give Aldo a call and order steel as soon as I have the opportunity.