Here at AGM, we have been spoiled by our in-house database which is built on the Filemaker Pro platform.  It is incredibly robust and useful.  Unfortunately, web compatible databases are not quite so easy to use or logical.  So, when we built the AGM Reference Database for Insider, we had to essentially re-learn how to search our own database.  We are still exploring other potential software to use for this which might be better than what we have.. but in the meantime it is still a handy database.  These are a few tips that will help you (and us) to get the best results:     *Less is more.  It is usually best to start with a fairly broad search and then narrow it down.  If you search for a complex search term, you will get far more unwanted results.  For example, if you search for "spiked helmet", you will get spiked helmets of course, but also every other kind of helmet as well.  Search for "spiked" instead to narrow it down.       *Our item descriptions were written by many different people over the years, who may have used different terms to describe the same type of item.  The more general you can be, the more likely you are to find what you are looking for.  For example: different employees at different times may have a WWI German trench knife and wrote the description title as: "Trench Knife", "Close Combat Knife", or even "1.Weltkrieg Kampfmesser".  (Sometimes it makes us feel good about ourselves to pretend that we know more than one language.)  So, if one search term does not work for you, try similar terms that could be used to describe the same item, or a more general search that will yield more results that you can then narrow down.  In this case, searching with the categories selected: Country = Imperial German, Item Type = edged weapons, and then using "knife" in the description keyword search field should bring up the most results. Remember also that some folks here would have had different ideas about the item categories that we use to keep similar items grouped together in the catalog.  For many years, "accoutrements" was a catch-all, and anything that was not specifically and obviously in one of the other categories ended up in accoutrements.  Over the years we refined that to being gear that a soldier would have worn on his person, and other things that he might have used (but not worn) were then to go into "equipment."  This distinction varied from writer to writer, though.  Using the item type in your search helps to narrow down the results, but if you are not finding what you are looking for, remove it and do a more general search.