I have often wished the same, myself. I followed Ed back in the day, so to speak, along with many others, back before even an ABS, and why my most trustworthy blades, the ONE I would grab, would be an ABS MS knife from one of several makers, any would get me through anything, or I would be the thing which failed. And there are many never heard of, who perhaps are even better, as they are too busy making knives, rather than writing, promoting, running for office, or trying to hit it big, etc etc.

One problem with that concept always bugged me. Nobody yet has come out with a lock worthy of such a blade. The Hinderer is close in 3 out of 4 axis. But that closing axis is the killer.

Every popular lock is sprung closed, or in the case of liner/frame locks, IS the spring. Any will bounce under shock, leading to anywhere between all and none of lock surface engaging, lesser surface contacts under shock causing severe deformation and failure far sooner. Great examples of such being spine whacks with most any plain liner or integral can bounce/squirt one unlocked, likewise lockbacks can see-saw madly while buzzing from shock, and even the highly regarded Axis lock disengaged with a moderate blow to pommel.

The all lose to inertia, as enough inertia will compress a spring.

I have puzzled over this and have come up with several workable solid locks, using suchlike a 1/4" horizontal dowel as used on stop studs simply camming down into track on back of blade of an out the front slider of close tolerance. The out the front takes care of all but straight back failure right out of the starting gate, being surrounded by handle (strong enough handle). But am not the machinist to make it, nor driven enough to more than armchair general such things.

But a fine blade would really be a waste if handle and lock not up to what such a blade could do, otherwise a Rolls winged victory on an Isuzu.

oh...and simple congratulations on owning a blade by Ed. It would be hard to imagine better and it be steel. Dan Maragni has attacked the same ideas of superlative, even defining them (as they all must do, just for a target), via a completely different route in inducing such transformations of molecular structure via various heat treating, soaking, quenching cycles including molten salt baths, interrupting at one state, and taking the steel an entirely different direction than it would naturally. Some of the simple, but exceedingly pure and fine grained steels to come out of Sweden and Germany have been another approach to the same thing. What defines them all is, what are you expecting it to do when you are finished? A literal finest edge possible razor/scalpel steel will not make the best all day dirty hide stripper, and the best hide stripper a poor wood or bone splitter. I recall Rick Hinderer relating his choices of steel and unpolished edging, with a personal account of years ago wanting to make the ultimate sharp knife, sharpest ever made, truly fine enough to split a human hair, and he succeeded, using a microscope, even. The thing was, that same ultimate edge was terrible on most everything else. The steel composition lacked protruding carbides at the edge, and the edge lacked physical tooth to cut anything else.

Back to ultimate forged blade for ultimate tough folder, until we get a better handle and lock, we may have the best blades we deserve. As an aside, I cannot help but chuckle in thinking what some of the best bladesmiths might turn out for a folder, many of them may be among the best bladesmiths of all time, but engineer or mechanism designer they ain't...I am picturing a solid maple wood handle and wire inlay with bent nail through blade, even now, called The Early American.