I tried Barry's tessellation technique at a couple of different sizes on this spyderco. It is not foolproof as you can see, but it is a straightforward method that fills an area quickly and evenly. I drew my hexagons by hand, and curved the layout somewhat to follow the general curve of the knife.
Eric, that works and looks fine.
Once you get your head around hexagons, you can mix and match with squares also.
And once your brain is thoroughly tesselated, you can even use circles and ovals for your tesselation framework.