I have a (relatively) short introduction before getting into the ratings with a few important things to put them into context. That way you can get into the steel ratings quickly. Most of the discussion of how the ratings were generated, various caveats and details, etc. are after the ratings. If you want to learn more than keep reading past the ratings.

I wrote an article about knife steel ratings available online in 2018, where I concluded that none of them were very good. At the end of the article I gave a list of reasons why I hadn’t made my own ratings chart, two big reasons were: 1) I didn’t yet have articles explaining what edge retention and toughness even is (this was early on in Knife Steel Nerds), 2) I didn’t have good experimental numbers on many steels. Both of those things are no longer an issue as I now have way too many articles and a book. And I’ve done a lot of experimental work on knife steels where I feel more confident in my own ratings. There are still a few things I don’t know but we have enough information to make educated guesses where data isn’t available. I reserve the right to change my ratings based on new information.

For those who are more visual in nature: