Knives Books

The first thing to notice is a lack of an index. Why call something a guide if you don't provide a way to find information? The book, called an Identification and Value Guide covers only four brands of knives. It would better be called an extensive look at Case Knives and short look at a few others. If you are looking for a general guide for collecting knives, there must be better books available.

The book covers mostly Case and four other makers. It is
advertized as a guide to help you identify and date individual
knives or whole collections. If your collection is limited to
these five makers then you could be satisfied,however if you
collect throughout the industry you will want a refund. It should be described properly.

Jim Sargent's book, American Premium Guide to knives and razors is not a let down if you are into Case or Queen knives. If you have bought other guides and been disappointed by how many advertisements were in it you will be very happy with this book because there are none.

Most of the pictures are black and white but they are detailed and easy to see. There are color pics and these are quite good but few. Even still, going through the pictures is akin to walking into a knife museum.

There are sections in the book for Crandall and Remington but not as detailed or lengthy as the Case and Queen sections. Still these smaller sections are very good compared to anything else I've found.

The Case fixed blade section of this book is about as good as any I have ever run across with information I have never found anywhere else for any price. This section even details the differences in sheaths from different eras and how to date the knife by the sheath if necessary.

I would recommend this book to any Case, Queen or Remington collector. It is not going to cover other manufacturers in detail so if you are looking for values on your Spyderco knives this is not the book you want. What it does cover for the Case, Queen, and Remington collector is perhaps some of the most comprehensive and detailed information for these knives as you can find anywhere at this writing. It is a great guide for these brands.

I've said, "WOW, I did not know that" more times since acquiring this book than any other knife guide I've ever purchased.

No one book can completely cover even one subfield of knife collecting and values anymore, but this is probably one of the five or six essential reference works for knife collectors. I bought it mainly because I've been a case collector in the past, and it's also especially strong on pocket knives, and Case is the most well known and most collectible of the factory production pocket knives. The book covers all the other main names in that field, including Buck, Schrade, Remington, Queen, Camillus, Parker, Kershaw, Schatt and Morgan, Winchester, and many other lesser known names. But it also covers fixed blades, limited editions and semi-custom, and custom knives are covered as well. But this book is considered to have the strongest coverage of any collector's book on Case, and it's probably an essential reference work for any Case and other American pocket knife collector.

I will be returning this book. I should have read the reviews before buying because one reviewer described what I just discovered with the arrival of "Knives and Razors." It is a huge, detailed encyclopedia of Case (307 pages), with a bone-thrown to Queen/Shatt & Morgan (84 pages), and Remington (86 pages). It is advertised as an all-encompassing guide to American knives. It is not, although Case collectors will love its focus/detail.

I collect vintage knives, mostly the Texas toothpick pattern, but not Case. An incomplete list of manufacturers in my collection includes Parker, Buck, Ka-Bar, Shrade, Robeson, Hammer Brand, Imperial, Camillus, Winchester, Smith & Wesson, Smokey Mountain, A.G. Russell. NONE of these brands are given a word in the "American Premium Guide to Knives and Razors."

This book didn't have but a few peices that I was looking for..The illustration was poor which is not Amazon's problem..Wish I could return for a refund;but know that's not possible..Thank you for you're quick shipping of the item..And I will continue to do business w/you..Gordon Stanley

This was an Xmas gift for my husband who collects knifes, he really likes it.

Ron Stewart and Roy Ritchie's Big Book Of Pocket Knives provides an excellent reference for any who would collect pocket knives, with close-up black and white photos of the knives accompanied by written descriptions and values. A "must' for avid collectors.

This book is almost useless to me. Its listings of various cutlery companies is wanting. The cutlery companies that are included in this book only list only very old or vintage knives and are not in any particular order. I cannot find but only a few knive values when searching for a specific knife. For me, it is a waste of money and paper.

I bought this book based on another customer review. About the only pictures are on the front cover. This book is NOTHING more than various knive ads and catalogs from long past. There is no related history or collector insights. Indeed there is very little original writing in this book at all. Major modern manufacturers are not covered (Buck for instance) and like I said, there is very little additional information other than the catalog reprints. Knife values are kind of strange. My recent sales are as much as 4 times what is listed. Most are 2-3 times what is listed. I have noticed that other knife books are a little low also. There is no real help with identification in this book either. The only thing I liked about this book was the cover.

Once more Walker spends an entire book trying to promote himself even when the facts don't support it. In this case the original design was created by well known knife writer Chuck Karwan.

Overall a pretty good modern view of the Kabar fighting knife. I was hoping for some post history on the Type 2 Kabar for collecting.

The KA-BAR Fighting/Utility Knife is the most widely recognized and popular combat knife to ever be produced in the United States. Introduced on November 24, 1942, the KA-BAR has performed with an unsurpassed lethal effectiveness on the battlefields of Europe, the South Pacific, Korea, Southeast Asia, Central America, and the Middle East. In 1995, the KA-BAR company decided to update this venerable combat weapon. KA-BAR: The Next Generation Of The Ultimate Fighting Knife is the detailed story of that project and provides the military buff with an insider view of the historic redesign process as it chronicles the exacting design criteria, cutting-edge materials, extensive factory tests, and exhaustive real-life field tests. KA-BAR is the definitive treatise on the world's most effective combat knife and its transformation to meet and excel in the battlefield conditions of the 21st century.

Frankly, I read this fairly quickly; it isn't difficult reading. It also reads quickly if you skim over the fairly large chunks of biography, the promotion of past publications, the guys in special ops that Mr. Walker knows and the whose who in knife and sheath making. (I have to wonder about how the taxpayer's money is spent when seemingly at government expense Mr. Walker, while TDY as a reservist to Panama, carries out some of his knife testing in Limon Bay to encounter Gruber fish "with only spear guns." But, hey, if Uncle Sam can spend gazillions of bucks on roads that go to nowhere...)
Anyhow, lots of big pics of Ka-Bars courtesy of Ka-Bar. It would have been nice having fewer of those (they get a tad repetitive) and more of the testing of the Ka-Bar, which is what the book is supposed to be about. Lots of letters from Ka-Bar and the Ka-Bar project consultant which, I guess, is ok but adds up to a certain amount of additional padding. The appendix is the "original brochure" which is nice (more padding). I suppose that the original brochure didn't feature complete detail drawings but that would have been nice. Included ad drawings with numbered parts cry out for more detail, cross sections, miscellaneous dimensions.
But I'm being overly picky. The bottom line is that the Next Generation Ka-Bar is a knife with a lot of thought given to the materials and design and I'm sure it's every bit as good and probably better than the original. Mr. Walker's book; well, it costs more from Paladin. Glad I got it through Amazon...

The book contains spelling errors and is marred by pictures overlaying other pictures. The paper used is so-so and will yellow like it's previous versions. As a resource to the custom knife industry, it is valuable however.

I use this book for one reason. If I find a custom knife I am interested it I use the directory in the book to find out where the maker lives, their contact info and price range. That alone is worth the price of the book though Ken could improve upon it by providing page numbers in the directory that would show you examples of a maker's work instead of flipping through the book trying to find them. I would recommend for next year Ken try to get at least one photo per maker.

This book is a review of trends happening in the past year for the cutlery enthusiast. Pictures are B&W but the paper this book uses is so-so.

This particular issue lacks the maker photo index and is marred with misspellings. Also pictures were overlayed on each other which makes seeing some of these fine handmade knives difficult. Articles are informative.

Neil Belton takes on the tricky business of revealing an obscure and brilliant intellect, deliberately removed and enigmatic, at a time when Europe is convulsed by the Second World War, perhaps the most brutal and morally defined catastrophe in the history of civilisation. Some readers will be disappointed that little action of the white or black knight variety, or exported cliches of the kind that make Irish pubs the toast of the world, can be found in 'A Game with Sharpened Knives.' But this was never Belton's intention. Instead, hived off from the guns and bombs, Ernest Schrodinger, author of the most famous cat since the Sphinx, flees Nazi Germany and takes sanctuary in neutral Dublin, where the President of the Irish Republic, de Valera, has created an asylum for leading scientists. What could be cosier? But as Schrodinger combines a domestic menage a trois with the receptive tabla rasa of theoretical physics, he is stalked by an agent of his former homeland. Belton plays on the stultifying purgatory of a quasi neutral country (de Valera says divided Ireland is neither alive nor dead) to bring Shrodinger's cat home to haunt him, so that from one moment to the next, through the fog and the black out, we never forget the rumbling confusion, the sheer anxiety of ideas, that led to the war in the first place.

I'm sorry, I just couldn't stay awake reading this thing. It was confusing, boring, and annoying. I had high hopes when picking it up: I like historical fiction, I like reading about science and scientists, and I've generally found Irish writers (at least those available in the US) to be to my liking.

Skip this one.

The author has mixed lots of fakes with some very good knives. He also can't tell myth from fact when it comes to American history.

This book is second only to the Sheffield Exhibition Knives book published a few years ago. Mr Hayden-wright is obviously well versed in the history of knife making in Sheffield and has woven his knowledge very well with the many fine examples pictured.

My only complaint is that it would be great to see more detailed pictures of some of the more important pieces, but overall my thought is that many collectors and makers will be inspired by this book. Well worth the price for the serious collector and maker.

Pat Farey's "Knives" is more of an introduction to knives, than a detailed encyclopedia covering specific knives or specific knife types. While a decent introduction, the book does not go into depth and is greatly biased towards knives in current production. It does however cover the essentials, and the pictures are clear and instructive.

Being one of the man's oldest tools, the knife has a lot of material to work with, trying to sum it up in a single volume of only 144 pages it's really an enormous challenge that the author tries to tame with some success, but to call the book an encyclopedia is misleading, it can be called a good reference, but since it contains too many personal opinions and absolute truths, that can't be upholded even now, that the scientific sense that the word encyclopedia infers is lost; the substantial references to commercial knives and products available only in some places and in a given time (even tough no longer available at the date of the publishing) makes this a short lived and forgettable book.

great photos, good reference for Randall nuts! I would have put approximate values as an appendix but hey you can't think of everything!

Lots of photos of rare Randall knives but very little history to go with them.

A fair representation of the subject but too many drawing , not enough photos and lacking in details.

The book offers a lot of useful info such as the origin of pocketknives, how to identifiy some of them and how to identify some counterfeit knives. At 80 pages it's a good start but not a compete index. My particular favorite parts of the book are Mr Levine's insets that offer some interesting info. For example I did not know that WWII ear Nazi knives did not include pocket knives, only fix blade daggers but the many pocket knives sold at knife and gun shows are well done fakes that were made in the US. I think this book would complement any knife collectors library. Some of the examples of the knives discussed are rare and the photos are excellent.