Show HN: KnifeGeek – Online Database of Pocket Knives (knifegeek.io)
Back then i noticed something, it was quite tedious to easily sift and search through knives based on length, steel, brand, and what not to find the knife for me. There were some great youtube channels that helped me pick out what i wanted however i had to sit through multiple 30 minute videos just to review 10-15 knives or so each.
Recently i've been having a little trouble sleeping so i decided to pickup a new passion project to work on late at night, here's KnifeGeek!
it's a completely free website where you can search, filter, and sift through an extensive knife database (over 60K+ knives) and add them to your collection or wishlist. You do need to sign in to add stuff to your wishlist or collection and after a bunch of advanced searches.
Please check it out and let me know if you think anything is missing! I'll try to flesh it out more on a daily basis if people find it cool or useful.
Planning to add in price comparison functionality and more data per knife in the next week.
PS: Images are a little shoddy, working on that.
88 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadI’m not sure how realistic this is, but I always wanted to be able to search for knives “with similar shapes”. Like “knives with fat a belly” or something like that.
If there exists good knife silhouettes it may be possible!
Either way congrats on the great site!
Actually thats a great idea and should be doable! I already do some analysis on the images. Will take a stab at it in the next few days and post back here.
Well done, sir
I tried tapping on the knife name several times before realizing I had to tap the image.
More things should be links. Like if I'm on
https://www.knifegeek.io/blades/pro-tech-malibu
Most all the words on the page should be links. "Pro Tech", "Wharncliffe", "Damascus", "Malibu" etc should all be clickable to view similar things.
Oh, and you should add a metadata field for locking mechanism.. fixed, friction, lockback, liner, frame, button, axis, butterfly, etc.
Thanks a ton! Planning to add pages for each brand (Kershaw, Benchmade, etc...) listing their knives as well as each attribute (steel, handle material, colors, etc.)
Back button is broken, for example search for balisong knives, click on one, click back - your search is gone.
Also, suddenly the search stopped working - maybe you just pushed an update? Now when I start typing into the knife type search I get force redirected to a login - but I don't want to login - I want to search.
Edit: Now I see in your description you force the login after a few advanced searches. I don't know why that is, but the experience is jarring. If you are trying to block bots a cpatcha is probably a better idea.
Not so much broken as non-existent XD. That's a great point though, will add in functionality to keep search state.
Yep forcing login after advanced searches was the quick option there, will definitely swap it out tonight.
Thanks a ton for the feedback!
On another note I sadly miss multitools
That said, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is a work in progress and that you'll be adding additional information about how you use my data soon?
Yeah you're right, i've been working on this for two weeks so far and haven't thought that portion out yet. Will see if i can add some form of anonymous login to avoid needing an email.
Just need the email to associate with an account to persist the collections + wishlists features at the moment
Also, nice site. :)
One thing that can be improved is how the knives are displayed. The white aliased border around the thumbnails looks really really bad, and really turns me off from staying on the site.
One major reason why people like knives is that they look beautiful. The image thumbnail does the complete opposite.
Please use 24bit PNG with proper alpha, on a lighter background, so blade shape and colors can be more beautifully represented.
The hover effect, too. Nice experiment to learn something, now it's time to burn it with fire.
This is chrome on ubuntu: https://imgbox.com/mCWq87NW
That is completely fair, looking into ways to improve the images now. Agreed that blades are quite beautiful and the website should do em more justice. Thanks a ton for the input!
r/Knifeclub: https://www.looria.com/reddit/knifeclub/products
r/Knives: https://www.looria.com/reddit/knives/products
r/EDC: https://www.looria.com/reddit/edc/products
Plus, this comment is how you do marketing well, not pushing your own site at all but adding something helpful to the discussion. I'm definitely impressed with my initial look at the site.
Back on topic, I really like all the different search parameters, but especially for knives you should probably have a price min/max slider. When I was last looking for a knife, it was a PITA since many of the enthusiast recommendations were focused on $200+ and hand-forged one-off knives. I know price is way harder to filter by, but that would be a genuinely useful addition since when I was shopping I knew that I wasn't going to spend over 150 but I also wasn't interested in anything under 30 since it was almost certainly junk.
The knife geek site is super impressive though, I really like how fast and responsive the UI is, especially if this is a weekend project.
Once i've got more sources per knife i'll go ahead and add in "Where to buy" links as well as pricing filters!
I'd love to get access to the data, can totally drop a "Powered by looria" thing on the site as well :D
Can you shoot an email to hello@knifegeek.io w some details? Can take a CSV, JSON, api access, or whatever!
https://im.ge/i/alaVhY
https://www.knifegeek.io/blades/kershaw-7100-grybw
Otherwise, functional features would be awesome! Folding/fixed should be at the top of that list.
just fixed it as soon as i got home. Should be good to go!
--- Select-to-compare functionality does sound super interesting though and could be useful, added it to my backlog :D
- in the footer - on the advanced search page - on a knife details page
it's global for your user and stores it locally in the browser :)
Also a filter for if the knives had assisted opening.
images get positioned according to simple logic (find top, find bottom, rotate, etc...)
data is cleaned and units are stripped accordingly (5 inches can be 5in 5 in 5inch 5inches etc...)
so far it's really trivial code so alot of measurements are getting dropped, need to go back in and fix it up and re-scrape/populate the data soon.
[0] https://imgur.com/NYQYEOK
[1] https://imgur.com/HUJrgm7
It'll also reduce your load a bit, as I won't have to continuously reload the grid page of 50 knives just to look at one.
Some other suggestions:
* If I search handle material "micarta" I get a whole bunch of distinct incarnations, like "micarta, ash wood burl" and "bone, micarta, wood". Tokensise each term in the material type and return them as groups. "micarta" should have both of those, as should "wood", and ofc "bone" would distinguish them.
* For brand search, populate the list alphabetically or something. It's nice to have a list to scroll to explore. I have no idea what options are available other than a few brands I already know. If the goal is to find and explore the 60k knives there, I need some help.
* Sanity check the knife stats. There are going to be zero knives with a blade thickness of 1", nevermind 5". An example of one that shows up here is this knife: https://www.knifegeek.io/blades/boker-121589 which I presume you scraped from here: https://www.boker.de/en/vollintegral-2.0-jaeger-gold-121589#... but you should maybe have a secondary scrape for stats that are impossibly beyond params. Here seems to have the correct blade thickness: https://www.knifecenter.com/item/BO121589/boker-jager-gold-v...
* From the knive page, present tags to re-broaden the search. Using that same knife example, the navigations is currently: `Blades -> Boker Jager Gold Vollintegral ...` which is useless. It's a knife in the category of knives on a knives website. I'd like to be able to navigate back by type / brand etc.
It helps the exploration. I might find something I think has nice features and want to explore that set more.
* An obvious one I'm sure you have planned, but there are much more crucial and interesting features than the ones listed for filters. I care far far more about the general style of knife than I do blade thickness or handle material.
Fixed vs folding vs others is ofc vital.
Within the category of folding, the type of lock, if any.
Blade shape, a no brainer.
Nice to have overarching categories too. Rescue vs dive vs bushcraft would help immensely.
A lot of hobbies have this same problem. Dunno why there isn't a self-host solution. Something like https://pcpartpicker.com/ but flexible to any type of product/community
Journey of a thousand miles and all that, but building the inventory feels like the most vital, yet boring part of the entire endeavor.
There are some general sellers (bladeHQ, knifecenter, mountain) where you can scrape thousands of brands at once which is helpful too.
But, proper drop downs would help a lot, I can’t always remember all the terms.
And, once I’ve found a knife, showing one’s with similar features would be really cool.
Just shipped an update to list all values! That's a good point.
> And, once I’ve found a knife, showing one’s with similar features would be really cool.
Comparisons sounds totally useful, added it to my backlog. Thank you!
should have it done within 30! (apologies about using big mac units).
- in the footer - on the advanced search page - on a knife details page
it's global for your user and stores it locally in the browser :)
I searched for "Opinel" and I only see the suggestions, I would have expected a way to have a search result page because with the small images there's no way I could identify the one I have or browse around in a meaningful way. (Also it seems to default to last autosuggest line, not the first, Firefox on Linux)
When I go to All Blades and Filter, I can input the brand but the results below don't filter and I don't see a submit button.
It's a shot in the dark but did you maybe focus a little too much on enthusiasts who want to look up a specific known thing and less to the casual user who only knows a few data points and browse around?
Whoever manufactures or causes to be manufactured, or sells or exposes for sale, an instrument or weapon of the kind usually known as a dirk knife, a switch knife or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle, having a blade of over one and one-half inches or a device or case which enables a knife with a locking blade to be drawn at a locked position, any ballistic knife, or any knife with a detachable blade capable of being propelled by any mechanism, slung shot, sling shot, bean blower, sword cane, pistol cane, bludgeon, blackjack, nunchaku, zoobow, also known as klackers or kung fu sticks, or any similar weapon consisting of two sticks of wood, plastic or metal connected at one end by a length of rope, chain, wire or leather, a shuriken or any similar pointed starlike object intended to injure a person when thrown, or a manrikigusari or similar length of chain having weighted ends; or metallic knuckles or knuckles of any other substance which could be put to the same use and with the same or similar effect as metallic knuckles, shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than six months; provided, however, that sling shots may be manufactured and sold to clubs or associations conducting sporting events where such sling shots are used.