Not wanting to hijack your thread, but to add to the discussion…
Sounds like you don’t need a hardcore offroading fork, but you’re after a bit of comfort/on a budget. I’m gonna be buying a steel fork for a cyclocross effort and narrowed it down to roughly three choices (like the look of the surlys but these others are cheaper):
On-one Pompetamine (£50 disc);
Planet X Kaffenback (is it the same fork as the pomp?);
Genesis Croix de fer (£60).
Guess you could also consider the on-one cromo 29er MTB fork – looks a little heavy duty for my needs.
My main concern is ride quality/compliance. The main difference with the forks I am looking at is that the CDF fork is straight-legged, whereas the On-one forks have curved blades.
I would assume that curved legs would have a little more ‘give’ in them (insert rude joke here), but would love to hear the opinion of a frame builder (believe Brant gets word every time “on-one” appears in a post)/cross racer/tourer/bloke down the road who has ridden one or more of the above.