Good stuff, ESEE makes their knives out of 1095, and when Blackjack knives was owned by Ken Moran they used 1095 (they are back to using A2 now).

Here is a guide to knife steels.
http://zknives.com/knives/articles/knifesteelfaq.shtml

Good steel. He swears by 1095 - it is NOT stainless but he avoids stainless says it is harder to sharpen and keep an edge with stainless.

Good, solid, no frills steel. Sharpens easily and holds a nice edge. RC 58 is about my favorite hardness for a hard use woods knife, for my purposes and "skill" set.

TOPS is a great company to deal with. I'm not a fan of tacticool knives, but many of their designs are well conceived. Two friends have recently licensed designs to them and both say they are honorable and committed to the customers and vendors.

1095 is a very tough steel.

I grew up being careful with my knives- cut things but don't use a knife for chopping or prying. My father used to give me his old knives, mostly knives with broken tips. Well a good steel is more resistant to this type of thing. I've been focused on the good state of the art stainless steels, they are hard and can hold a good edge, but they aren't very tough. 1095 on the other hand is very tough even though it isn't rust resistant.

Look up Becker knives on the internet, and in particular look up destruction tests of Becker knives on youtube. This brand among others uses 1095, and they make very tough knives. I've watched tests where they chopped through 2x4's, splintered bricks, punched holes in sheet metal, etc. They do a lot of this and all it does is to slightly dull the edge. Another test that I've seen that is interesting is when they stab the knife point into the broad side of a 2x4 as hard as they can, then bend the knife over sideways until it breaks out a chunk of wood. They do this repeatedly until they cut a hole completely through the 2x4. Stabbing a 1095 blade into a piece of wood and breaking out the wood by using the knife as a pry bar shows the toughness of that steel.