Ethnographic Arms & Armour - New book from Larrin Thomas (Knife Steel Nerds)

For those who still like to read words printed on paper, Dr. Larrin Thomas (Knife Steel Nerds) has produced an excellent book on knife steels and updated it slightly during our COVID times. Titled, Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geomtery, the book is a hefty 450 pages. If you don’t know Larrin, he is a metallurgical engineer who runs the blog site knifesteelnerds where he freely shares his own research on the qualities of knife steels and knife making. After many requests from his readers, he has produced this excellent book. Here is a brief description.

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How to make the highest performing knives. A book for knife enthusiasts, knifemakers, and bladesmiths. Not a how-to on knifemaking or bladesmithing but an in-depth exploration of the effects of different steels, metallurgy, heat treatments, and edge geometries on knife performance. This book provides ratings for toughness, edge retention, and corrosion resistance for all of the popular knife steels. Micrographs of over 50 steels. Specific recommended heat treatments for each steel. And answers to questions like: 1) Does a thinner or thicker edge last longer? 2) What heat treatment leads to the best performance? 3) Are there performance benefits to forging blades? 4) Should I use stainless or carbon steel? All of these questions and more are answered by a metallurgist who grew up around the knife industry. Note: The book now has conversions to Celsius throughout after feedback from Global readers.

Available in paperback through amazon.com for a reduced price of $31.87 plus shipping, the book has received 356 ratings with 94% of responses giving it 5-stars.