Hi @theluthier just curious why don't you use bevel instead of knife to speed up the workflow?
Do you mean when adding the notches and damage to the metal? Adding an edge loop and bevel one vert?
I would suggest it is a way of adding detail in an artistic way and less uniformed. Bevelling one vert would mean more consistent shapes and more time spent trying to de-uniform all the knocks and nicks by edge sliding verts around, you probably wouldn't be any quicker.
Help yourself to a cookie.
Adrian's mind is in the right place with regards to more artistic variation. Beveling several vertices at once is a interesting approach! I can definitely see how that would be faster in theory. However, as Adrian pointed out, without manually modifying each one to look unique the effect would be too consistent for a quality result.
That said this kind of situation is where you as the artist can choose the approach that works best for you. Since there's always several methods to do the same thing in Blender, exercising your liberty and exploring new methods is entirely encouraged! Following instructions is not how 3D artists expand their capabilities. Using instructions as an introduction - an open door if you will - and transcending them is how one expands their capabilities 👍
@adrian2301 what i mean was beveling the edges.. and you can vary them by adding the segment, moving the vertices constraint to edge or on x/y/z axis and also by scaling them on the x/y axis..
Sorry maybe its just because as @theluthier says adding the damage one by one is a bit tedious, and i find this method helps me. Anyway thanks for the insight..
Haha.. thanks @adrian2301 that's not my intention though i just love to learn and @theluthier is one of my favorite teacher, so i like to know why he chooses certain tools instead of other.