
How I Became a Knife Steel Metallurgist - AceyMan
https://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/10/08/how-i-became-a-knife-steel-metallurgist/
======
colinsidoti
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](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...](https://ashlandleather.com/blogs/inside-ashland/johnny-the-fox-
interior-leather-options)

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

~~~
kfk
Could we stop calling it content and refer to it as “writing”?

~~~
dasil003
I don't think that genie is going back in the bottle.

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CPLX
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.

~~~
ribs
Heh...I was excited when he mentioned the school. I’m an amateur geologist and
have considered it with reverence for some time now. Great mineral museum, if
you’re into that kind of thing.

~~~
tnorthcutt
+1, really great museum with loads of samples (is that the right word?) of
more minerals than you knew existed.

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AceyMan
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

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axaxs
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.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
In the OEM part of the automotive world there's all sorts of dynamically
adjusted shocks, sway bars, etc, etc. None of that has made it into even the
highest levels (most $$$) of off road racing (where it would be very useful)
or normal racing (where it would still be useful, but far less so) yet.

Most recent tech is still under NDA and the people that do this stuff as their
day job don't post on hobbyist boards and doing your own testing is
prohibitively resource intensive compared to computer stuff. That's why you
don't hear about recent tech until it's old. If you keep up to date on
academic papers and industry press releases you can kind of get a fuzzy
picture of what's going on.

~~~
justtopost
The truth isnt so simple.

Electrically adjustible shocks were all over race cars in the late 80s to mid
90s. Sometime around the late 90s, we realized a good static setup is easier
to setup, more reliable, cheaper and better understood in most cases. While
some sports like drag racing still ocasionally use the tech (due to differing
forces during launch vs run). Aditionally, the bose system, in development
since the 80s, never really materialized in useable form, despite some neat
demos.

True, most roadracing leagues ban it as 'active', and being outside the spirit
of the race. This was due to it potentially becoming an arms race of whose
sponsor has the deeper pockets.

I do wish there were still a few 'unlimited' style races. Outside some hill-
climb racing it seems most innovation is explicitly forbidden. Nascar has no
relation to stock cars, f1 are not as fun to watch and have become a bizarre
weird sidenote, e-racing is finally coming of age, but regulations are making
for some monotonous designs.

I am sure there would be some interest in a no-holds barred race. Hell, there
needs be no rule that the craft even needs to touch the ground (or not be
sucked down to it). Lets open our collective transportation imagination...

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ggreer
> I am sure there would be some interest in a no-holds barred race. Hell,
> there needs be no rule that the craft even needs to touch the ground (or not
> be sucked down to it). Lets open our collective transportation
> imagination...

I'd love to see this as well. I think you'd end up with an interesting racing
league if you had the following rules:

1\. There are speed bumps at the entrance and exit of pit row. (This is to
prevent designs that could never work on regular surface streets, such as side
skirts for ground effect.)

2\. Losing teams can buy the winning vehicle for $100,000. (This is
effectively a budget cap to prevent the best funded teams from dominating.)

You'd probably end up with all kinds of crazy designs: active aerodynamics, 6
wheeled vehicles[1]… maybe even gas turbine electric drivetrains. I'd
definitely tune in.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34)

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creddit
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...](http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/assets/documents/teachers_wp.pdf))

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tomrod
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.

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_emacsomancer_
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri)

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noisy_boy
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.

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

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aasasd
Finally someone who has actually studied the blade.

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codr4
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...

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DrNuke
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.

~~~
AYBABTME
Any pointers? I have casually explored material sciences on Coursera, and I'm
always interested in computer-aided fields. But I had never heard of material
informatics. Is there anything CAD-like for the field?

~~~
DrNuke
Georgia Tech courses there are a nice intro
[https://www.coursera.org/gatech](https://www.coursera.org/gatech) ... in
particular the one by Prof Kalidindi for materials informatics once you are
familiar with the general, underlying physics
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/material-
informatics](https://www.coursera.org/learn/material-informatics) and then
this for high-throughput experiments if you have your own lab
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/high-
throughput](https://www.coursera.org/learn/high-throughput)

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dm8
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)

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ChuckMcM
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...](https://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/03/26/cru-forge-v-toughness-
testing-processing-and-background/)

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

[https://www.diamondbladeknives.com/Friction-
Forging](https://www.diamondbladeknives.com/Friction-Forging)

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

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larrywright
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.

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known
What are good alternatives to Gillette?

