101 Knife Designs: Practical Knives for Daily Use

I purchased this book about 2 years ago and it is by far my favorite book on knife making. Plenty of useful info, crisp coloful pics, and knife templates. This book is well worth the investment because you can adjust the templates according to your taste. Example. Say you find a template and you like the design of the handle but maybe the blade profile isn't the style you're looking for. Simply trace out the handle and match it up to another blade style that you want to use from another template, or draw up your own. The 101 designs in this book can literally turn into 1001 designs if you get creative. Awesome book. Highly recommend. Buy it!

I just bought and finished this book and I must say this is a great book that covers some harder to find details of knife design, that centers on Practical use blades. the title is quite clever as well as it not only shares 101 knifes designs in the back, but also covers introductory class in college courses. the book covers designs from basic utility knifes up to machetes and was easy for me to understand. it also helps answer one of the most important questions about knife design: Just how thick do I make this B****. it also covers the authors presses for making a knife pattern. It also does include at the end 101 knife patterns. All and all I learned far more about knife design then I knew before reading this. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn bladesmithing and to anyone who wants to learn the finer points of blade design. However, I must say that well this is a great book for learning how to design a blade, you should your own way of prototyping that fits you. example: I like to use clip studio paint over hand drawing a blade. I like clip studio because as I can draw the blade to size, then size the blade for printing it out in 8.5x11 printer paper to be printed out in full size. I also prefer to fine tune the blade as I am forging it for the first time, take a picture of the finished project and trace it out using Clip studio paint. However, I do plan on Incorporating some of Murray's design techniques into my own.

This isn't an instructional book about knife making, as others have pointed out. I has a few insights into knife design that I found useful, but I mostly found it useful for the collection of designs in the back. Murray really is an excellent knife designer. His designs are elegant, and still simple enough for a beginning maker to pull off. 5 or 6 of the first 15 knives I made were from his designs. They are great tools, feel great in the hand, and look beautiful. I would recommend this to any beginning maker, with the caveat that you won't learn the whole process in this book. There are plenty of other resources on that (YouTube, other books, BladeForums, etc). If you take this book as a catalog of excellent patterns that you can copy guilt-free, and a few nuggets of insight into knife design, then it is well worth the price. If you could only have one book about knife making to get you started, this probably isn't it.

I have not read any of Murray's previous books but this ones focus is on practical knife design. It has some full size color pictures of his work which are nice and they're inspiring. But it also has some great templates 101 that you can photocopy, over 30 pages. He's not so narrow minded about designs that he thinks his are the only one's that should be used, he even invites collectors to purchase ones that aren't practical. There's a good chapter on making your own patterns and one on specific features. The ideas and patterns about the neck knives was worth the price to me especially the kata-ha.

The author takes his knife making seriously (obviously - he apprenticed in Japan for a bladesmith for 6 years), and isn't afraid to challenge and criticize current conventions and establishments, such as the K-Bar and tanto blades. I can understand why this upsets some folks, but his logic is sound, and definitely worth considering. That said, some of the most valuable content is at the back of the book. The author shares some of the templates (and more than a few) he's created in the past. This can be nearly invaluable for the new knifemaker, as it gives proven designs to work with and modify to be your own. I really liked the fact the author wasn't afraid to criticize current designs with sound logic. If you're starting off with knifemaking, I'd highly recommend this book as a start for good design.

To be honest I was disappointed with this book What I expected has one hundred and one knife designs arranged in different categories such a hunting, camping, utility, kitchen etc The book sort of does that but instead has a lot of puffery about studying in Japan, how being able to cut a can is a good idea (Hmm), why Japanese steel and blade manufacture is superior to any other (Nah) The designs that are scattered through the book are ok but nothing really stands out This book is ok but if you are looking for knives in the groups I listed above I would suggest you look for a Bob Loveless or Randall book Loveless in particular set the standard of designs for Western style knives in particular

The description in Amazon does a great disservice to this book. The author is a Japanese trained bladesmith master with over 17,000 builds to his name. I'm only partially into the book (plus skimming the contents) and I already love the book.

Based on the designs alone, this book is worth five stars. The text is good but not great; I'd give it four stars. Master Carter is not as good a writer as Ed Fowler (for example), and I frequently wished he would elaborate more on certain topics. He explains his positions fairly well, although I do not necessarily consider them to be the final word on the subject — but the opinions of a Master Smith are ones worth considering very carefully. All things considered, this book is a must for anyone interested in the theory and practice of designing knives for use.