Knife Steel Nerds

Bill Moran and Bob Loveless are the most influential knifemakers in the modern era. They were two key figures in the rise of custom knifemaking, which began in 1970 with the formation of the Knifemakers Guild. Both predated the Guild and had fully formed philosophies on knifemaking before its formation. There are an impressive number of dichotomies between Loveless and Moran. For two men who were influential in a similar time period for making the same product – knives – they had surprisingly different philosophies. Both men served as president of the Knifemakers Guild in the early years: Moran from 1972-1973, and Loveless from 1971-1972 and again from 1973-1974. B.R. Hughes wrote about the two knifemakers in 1986 [1]: read more

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What is Buderus?

Buderus is a steel mill in Germany. They have several of their own knife steel products, including Nitro-V, Nitro-B, and Nitro-X7. They have also produced a wide range of standard grades, including 1095, 80CrV2, 15N20, and W2. read more

11/18/2025: I added that the book is now available in South Africa from SD Knives & Supplies.

Links to buy are at the bottom of the article!

Video

Knife Engineering

In recent years, I have been mostly known as the “MagnaCut man,” but before MagnaCut, my biggest success was probably with Knife Engineering. When I started my website, Knife Steel Nerds, I hadn’t thought about writing a book because I thought I was doing a website instead. But I soon realized that a website works better for individual articles than it does for introducing an entire subject. So that led me to writing the book Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry. That allowed people to learn the subject in order with all of the appropriate introductory material. The book has been a big success with many copies sold and many rave reviews from knifemakers and knife buyers alike. I tried very hard to make the subject as easy to understand as possible, and so it has been gratifying to hear people say that the book was exactly that. read more