How I Became a Knife Steel Metallurgist

I love content like this. I've found my knowledge becomes more specialized as I age, and content like this gives me an opportunity to grok other specialities with relative ease.

For whatever reason (I'm a software engineer), I particularly enjoy content about everyday physical goods. Knife steel has just been added to my bookmark list, but here are a couple more I think are worth sharing:

Making the ideal wool fabric for outerwear: https://weatherwool.com/pages/the-weatherwool-difference

Choosing the ideal card-holding material for leather wallets: https://ashlandleather.com/blogs/inside-ashland/johnny-the-f...

The grades and quality of Panama Hats: https://www.brentblack.com/panama-hat-grades-explained.html

This was really interesting. It’s also the first time I’ve ever read anything detailed about what kind of people go to Mines. As a CC student we were always slightly in awe of this other strange and very small and unknown but highly regarded school, full of people studying rocks or something, on the other side of the hills. Still underrated 25 years later it seems.

It’s also a great article that reminds me of what I actually like so much about the internet. A guy, who’s passions are almost incomprehensible to me in some ways, who has this incredibly specialized knowledge that he wants to share with the world. So he makes a website and shares it. And if I ever want to get deep into this topic there it is.

In the age of clickbait and awful social media it’s useful to remember why we were excited about the thing in the first place. I literally have no demonstrated interest in knife steel but I still want to sign up for this guy’s Patreon just because I’m glad people like him exist.

This is very fascinating, and I wish there were more resources or channels available to here directly from scientists such as this. Even the automotive sheetmetal advancements would be interesting to me, though no details given unfortunately.

As an aside, it is probably pretty hard being a metallurgist on the internet. There are so many people who parrot blatantly wrong info, and present themselves as authorities while having essentially zero training. I learned this the hard way by attempting to google comparisons of knife steels in particular, only to realize nearly every single resource gave different answers.

Additionally, I remember one very long thread in a gun debate, where several of these authorities were badmouthing Ruger for using cast vs forged parts, and how that seemed accepted as fact. One person took the time to write to a metallurgist at Ruger, who succinctly stated there was no inherent weakness to properly cast steel, and that their formulas are designed to exceed performance of plain forged steel(im leaving a lot of details out as im working from memory). It was a bit eye opening to me to realize these people who work behind the scenes existed, but at the same time how frustrating it must be to constantly be told you're wrong due to the nature of what you do. Luckily in CS we don't have quite the same issue. Sure people get things incorrect, but the barrier to entry is higher(using a computer and the internet vs using steel), and such a large amount of tech savvy people and CS profressionals exist that these are often cleared up or refuted. Metallurgists and other specialists don't have such a network to rely on.

I enjoyed this bio post by the site maintainer because it's demonstrative how a person with seemingly few resources can take a meandering path to significant accomplishment and status (PhD). Larrin's education arc mirrors much of the HN crowd mantra of late wrt the value of experience, degrees, elite schools, etc. It's just a nice case study on all those fronts (and a nifty website, to boot).

/Acey

Boy did I enjoy that! Beyond the enjoyable tale of his love of steel and how it has influenced his life, reading between the lines you can see just how being from certain backgrounds can really make a path like this challenging. He had challenges from both an upbringing perspective (didn't know what the GRE was, sort of randomly chose colleges initially, etc.) as well as from an education perspective (the challenges of smaller/weaker schools, the value of good teachers such as Mr. Bowler also see http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/teac...)

This is beautiful. The passion that drives him to differentiate, rooted in his past and in his daydreams. I recognize he succeeded where many in a similar situation would have failed (myself included). Kudos.

Blade steel and its study is really fascinating to me, though not at all related to my professional work. But I became fascinated a couple of decades ago by the manufacture of khukuris[1] in Nepal, which are often made of salvaged leaf springs from German-made lorries. (Well, I end up working the Nepali language professionally, if not khukuris.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri

It was so satisfying to read about somebody's extremely specific passion which I can never understand but totally relate to. I genuinely feel happy for the author and wish that he go on to do greater things in pursuit of his passion.

Finally someone who has actually studied the blade.

I can’t stress how much my math teacher’s passion had to say about my math understanding.

I've been practicing Ving Tsun for around 25 years. Many aren't aware, but the most of the system is based on blades. The issue I've been having is finding good enough knives to train with. Most of the stuff out there is ornamental crap that will teach you the wrong thing best case and break and hurt someone if you're unlucky. I ended up getting two big, well balanced hunting knives that I've blunted for training.

I'm pretty sure I'll end up making my own sooner or later...

Take a bow, Dr Knife Steel: inspirational, blessed and down-to-earth. My comparable obsession with austenitic steels has now gone fully virtual thanks to materials informatics.

That was a great read. I really admire people having passion as well as expertise in these unique fields. Once fortune 500 CEO had come to my school for talk and he told us shortest path to rise up in corporate ladder is either having expertise in somewhat niche but valuable field or starting your own successful company or having great amount of luck (which he said most C level folks don't say out publicly)

That is a great origin story, and his writing is awesome[1]. I have always been interested in knives and swords but not to the extent to go full on nerd on them!

[1] https://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/03/26/cru-forge-v-toughness...

Only slightly off topic I recently get to know about a technique in (industrial) manufacturing, friction forging:

https://www.diamondbladeknives.com/Friction-Forging

cannot say if it actually delivers what it promises, but the video is interesting.

This is fascinating, and I'm happy to see something like this here on HN. It hits close to home too: I'm a nerd, but my cousin is a successful knifemaker. I've picked up some knowledge about the different kinds of steel from following his work.

What are good alternatives to Gillette?