I feel like this is a silly question, but is there any harm/risk in using a coated blade for food prep? I'm not talking about a survival situation or anything, just the use of a coated blade like a Chris Reeve knife or black Fallkniven, etc for prepping food, cutting meats, slicing tomatoes, etc. I've never heard this mentioned or talked about, but it seems to me that blade coating could get into certain foods under some circumstances (total guess).
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Blade Coating and Food Prep?
- Thread starter tka1
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It should be OK. Something of more concern should be what are you using to protect your blade. If I know that the knife is to be used for food prep I usually use food grade mineral oil. There are some others that are food safe but I don't know what they are.
nozh2002
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Good question. I feel like I don't want to use any knife with epoxy based coating for extensive food preparation. But teflon is used on some coockware - should be OK, and I fill comfortable for some reason with TiNi, PoliCarbon and BC.
Other consern - painted knives - with some or other tipes of camo. Does anybody know anything about this paint? Cadmium and cobalt based pigments are toxic.
Thanks, Vassili.
Other consern - painted knives - with some or other tipes of camo. Does anybody know anything about this paint? Cadmium and cobalt based pigments are toxic.
Thanks, Vassili.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2006
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- 44,216
I suppose it depends somewhat on the individual coating.
According to the CRK website, he uses "guncoat", a teflon type product that I believe has to be baked on. While not a food grade material, I don't think you would extract any nasty chemicals from the coating while performing common knife-type kitchen tasks.
I am not familiar with the "ceracoat H8" coating that Falkniven uses and was unable to find any data on it. Found a reference in the Bladeforums archives that says it is good to ~1000F. Sounds like an inorganic treatment to me. Don't think any nasties would leach out during food prep.
Think I've seen some blades with Boron Nitride coatings. Those coatings would not be a problem either. Very inert.
Some of the lower end black coatings are epoxies. If they are baked epoxies I wouldn't have any qualms about food prep. The cure reaction is typically 150-250F. After cure, at room temp there will not be much that can leach out. If it were a room temp cure system, I would have problems with that.
nozh2002
Cad pigments are mostly reds and yellows IIRC. It's possible that there is Cad yellow in green stripes. But most paint companies in the US & Europe have been eliminating Cad pigments over the past 15 years because of their toxicity. I think it would be fairly unlikely to find Cad in a US or European coating. All bets are off on non-US, non-European materials, however. Don't know what they use.
To my knowledge Cobalt is not much used for paint pigments either. It's mostly used in ceramics. I think cobalt catalysts are still used in alkyd enamels, but no one is going to put that on a knife. Not enough resistance to anything. The only paints I would consider for a knife would be epoxy based and epoxies don't utilize cobalt catalysts.
Olive green paints such as are sometimes found on knives are usually formulated with yellow pigment and black. Most of the yellows are iron oxides or organics. The black is mostly lampblack or carbon black.
If you have doubts about the suitability of a coating for kitchen work, you could probably contact the knife manufacturer, tell him your concerns and find out what he is using to color the blade.
Hope that helps,
knarfeng
According to the CRK website, he uses "guncoat", a teflon type product that I believe has to be baked on. While not a food grade material, I don't think you would extract any nasty chemicals from the coating while performing common knife-type kitchen tasks.
I am not familiar with the "ceracoat H8" coating that Falkniven uses and was unable to find any data on it. Found a reference in the Bladeforums archives that says it is good to ~1000F. Sounds like an inorganic treatment to me. Don't think any nasties would leach out during food prep.
Think I've seen some blades with Boron Nitride coatings. Those coatings would not be a problem either. Very inert.
Some of the lower end black coatings are epoxies. If they are baked epoxies I wouldn't have any qualms about food prep. The cure reaction is typically 150-250F. After cure, at room temp there will not be much that can leach out. If it were a room temp cure system, I would have problems with that.
nozh2002
Cad pigments are mostly reds and yellows IIRC. It's possible that there is Cad yellow in green stripes. But most paint companies in the US & Europe have been eliminating Cad pigments over the past 15 years because of their toxicity. I think it would be fairly unlikely to find Cad in a US or European coating. All bets are off on non-US, non-European materials, however. Don't know what they use.
To my knowledge Cobalt is not much used for paint pigments either. It's mostly used in ceramics. I think cobalt catalysts are still used in alkyd enamels, but no one is going to put that on a knife. Not enough resistance to anything. The only paints I would consider for a knife would be epoxy based and epoxies don't utilize cobalt catalysts.
Olive green paints such as are sometimes found on knives are usually formulated with yellow pigment and black. Most of the yellows are iron oxides or organics. The black is mostly lampblack or carbon black.
If you have doubts about the suitability of a coating for kitchen work, you could probably contact the knife manufacturer, tell him your concerns and find out what he is using to color the blade.
Hope that helps,
knarfeng
Thanks. The info about the Fallkniven coating is especially interesting.
Thanks everybody for the info