My new book Knife Engineering continues to receive excellent reviews from amateur knifemakers, experienced knifemakers, and knife enthusiasts. Click here for more information about the book and links to buy. If you have purchased a copy, please go leave a review on Amazon.
My new book, Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry was released last week. The reviews have been coming in and the feedback is very positive so far. Go get one! And make sure you leave a review on Amazon. Also, Australian readers are now telling me it is possible to buy the book now from Amazon USA. So if you had issues ordering in the past give it another try. But do not order from Amazon Australia, see my article to learn why.
Update 4/14/2024: Gameco is sold out but Amazon Australia has it now.
Update 3/29/2022: I added that SD Knives and Supplies is the place to buy in South Africa
Update 3/31/2021: I added that Gameco is the place to buy in Australia.
Thanks to Lee Rothleutner and J Hamm for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
General Heat Treating Myths
1. Heat Treating is the most important factor for high performance knives. This one started out along the lines of “even the best steel will perform poorly if given a bad heat treatment,” and that I can’t disagree with too much. However, it has become somewhat fashionable to talk about knife performance as entirely (or almost entirely) controlled by the knifemaker’s skill in heat treatment. This has some truth to it as knifemakers who use a subpar heat treatment will certainly have subpar performance. However, the heat treatment can only do so much. No heat treatment is capable of making high carbide CPM 15V into a high toughness steel. No heat treatment can turn 1095 carbon steel into a stainless. And I would argue that the single most important factor for knife performance is the edge geometry rather than the steel selection or heat treatment. The edge geometry greatly controls the cutting ability and edge retention of the knife and also resistance to chipping and rolling. The image below shows measured edge retention of 154CM knives with different edge angles so you can see the vast difference in measured performance (higher number means more cardstock cut). Of course, focusing on any one of these factors at the expense of the others: steel selection, heat treatment, and edge geometry, is a mistake and each should be optimized for the given knife. But if we were to pick one factor that is the “most important” I’m not sure that heat treatment would be the one.
Thanks to Blade HQ and Dale D. Miller for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
Metallurgists
I have enjoyed writing many articles about the history of different knife steels over the past couple years of this website. It has been very challenging to track down the history of different steels to see where they came from and how. I decided to write an article about some of the greats who have made contributions to knife steel and knife tests. Many of these metallurgists didn’t know they were developing steels that would be used in knives. Some were developing tool steels or high speed steels. However, their steels have since been used in knives or their steel designs influenced other steels which have been used in knives. To keep this article manageable in size I have focused on those that developed steel or tests of knives. In other words, those that studied different aspects of steel are not included. Some notable people that were omitted for this reason include:
Thanks to Ben Palmer, Sergey C, Doug Greenblatt, River’s Edge Cutlery, Joel Temple, John Wayne, Bradley Nelson, Lenard Havard, and Joseph’s Edged Tools for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
Thanks to David Jabs, Juno Yoo, Tvines, Anton Buyanovski, Daniel Tiess, James Austin, Kyle Daily, and Nathanael C for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters! We now have over 200 supporters!
History of M390 Development
Thanks to all the new Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters that have joined since our big article on CATRA testing. The response has been phenomenal. We only need 4 more supporters to reach 200! Brandon Percival, Jason Stone, Fixall, John Schmidt, Adam Ringgenberg, Adam Webb, Shah Paul, Andy, Chad Shoopman, Dylan Giagni, Adam Nolte, John Scarborough, Datafox, Ben Secrist, Noah, Josh – REK, Robert Towe, NJO, Dd, Andrew Bounds, Nathan Gee, and hsc3.
Thanks to Trevor Welch, Theo N, Guns N’ Loaded, EV.Knives, Erik Coccia, Francisco J. Neto, Tristan, Gareth Chen, Alvise Miotti Bettanini, Henjie Taguinod, ben horridge, Steven, and Ian Miller for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
Thanks to Atlas Knife & Tool and Mervin Thomson for become Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!
We now have initial edge retention results from 32 steels on Patreon, so if you want an early look at that come join us on Patreon.
