Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry Paperback – July 16, 2020

Another purchase where I kinda have to laugh at myself for not totally understanding what I was getting. There is a LOT of material in this book, covering pretty-much every technical aspect of the considerations that should go into making a knife. I have no intention of making knives, myself, but as something of an armchair engineer and knife enthusiast, I am very curious about the topic. I got this book thinking it would be a good, all-in-one source of information. And it IS, but......whew, is it ever dense! There's a mountain of information in this book, which goes through every facet of interest in highly methodical detail. At first glance it's quite overwhelming.But, then again, it's a big topic and there's a lot of ground to cover. So I guess I'm not sure what I would've been expecting with a title like "Knife Engineering," knowing what I know about the study of working in steel, and what a deep topic that is.After diving into the book a bit, what I've come to realize is that it's incredibly well organized, and the sections where there is a great deal of detail are the sections wherein it makes complete sense for them to be more in-depth. And the language used is honestly very straight-forward. Everything is explained step-by-step, without assuming a lot of previous background on the part of the reader, and without glossing over key concepts that are crucial toward understanding.Another nice thing about the way the book is presented is that it's entirely possible to hop into a section of interest, and gain something useful from it without necessarily needing to have gone through all the foregoing material. The sections in the book are in a logical order, and there's benefit to be gained from reading it sequentially, but the information is "loosely coupled" and may be effectively thumbed through out of order.Overall it's a great book -- I don't know of anything else quite like it on the subject.

This is a good book, mainly focused on materials science. The author effectively summarizes the key concepts in each chapter. Highly recommended for knife enthusiasts.

Once in a blue moon a book comes along that's so good, so useful, so complete, and so definitive, that we affectionately call it a "Bible." You might recall THE Bible, which isn't a book so much as it is a library. But there have been other books we might call Bibles. There's _The Traditional Bowyer's Bible_ which comes in four volumes so is also a kind of library. The editor took a risk by putting "Bible" right in the title, but it has lived up to the name, so we can forgive any presumption that might've been involved.Now, there is a new Bible. It is called _Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry_, and it's by Larrin Thomas, son of Devin Thomas, maker of Damascus and other things. Larrin Thomas isn't just the son of a famous Damascus steel maker, either. He has a PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Having recently read this book, I've decided this is the new knife-maker's Bible. It is a must read for anybody who is interested in knife-making. It skillfully and articulately unravels the riddle of steel, its properties, the different affects of alloying elements, heat treating methods, and even blade geometry. Up until now, I've been recommending that everybody read _Steel Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist_ by John Verhoeven (which I still recommend), but _Knife Engineering_ has earned the title of the knife maker's Bible.Maybe that's going too far, though. I think the information in that book is invaluable besides being really interesting. But it's not actually about knife making. There's no guide for how to actually make a knife. It's about one aspect of knife making--the metallurgical aspect. But heat treating is arguably the most crucial aspect of knife making, so knife steel metallurgy is pretty fundamental, so I'm still going to call it a Bible.If you're not interested in making knives, but you are interested in buying and using knives, but you don't know anything about different kinds of steels or how to go about choosing a knife or judging between steels, you should still read this book. It will open your mind.Larrin Thomas also has a blog called Knife Steel Nerds that is worth checking out.