Boker Cera-Titan kitchen knives

L

Longden

Joined
Jun 22, 1999
Messages
579
I saw these at my local knife shop this weekend and bought the larger (7-5/8") kitchen knife, purely for interest sake, because the concept sounded like Talonite (except using sintered titanium and silver rather than cobalt).

A search on the forums shows some questions asked last year, but nothing subsequent. Has anyone else had a chance to play with this knife?

The handle seems rather cheesy, and narrower and more rounded than I'd like, but the blade is cutting OK, tho it's still early in the game.

If it is like Talonite, then at $60 (Knife Center), it seems like it'd draw more interest than it has unless there was some issues raised about it?

http://store.knifecenter.com/pgi-ProductSpec?BOTI11

They also offered the blade in two folder types at the store, but they seemed clunky (thick roundish scales), and I had a more immediate interest in a kitchen knife that can hold its cutting power longer.

- Longden
 
Your comments and your web page reference don't talk about this being a ceramic composite, not just titanium and silver. My interest is reduced because the combination of titanium and ceramic doesn't suggest a knife with toughness or sharpness. My experience with titanium is that it is hard to sharpen and does not take as sharp an edge as steel. My experience with ceramic is that it is hard to sharpen and brittle. If you combine ceramic and titanium I would expect something that is hard to sharpen, does not take a razor edge, and while tougher than ceramic is not as tough as steel.

Here is a link to a website where they mention the ceramic content of the material and talk about its relative toughness.

http://www.agrussell.com/knives/by_maker/a_through_d/boker/boker_lambda_folder.html
 
If you go to the Boker website they explain it just like the knifecenter website. The term 'ceramic' is a much broader term today than it was in the past and the ceramic in the boker is carbide. So you have carbides in a matrix of titanium that has a bit of silver in it. If you check the hardness of the titanium it be relatively low perhaps 45-50 Rc but the carbides will give you excellent edge retention. I wonder how easy it is to sharpen. The same situation exists in the Talonite blade where the matrix of cobalt is relatively soft but the carbides give excellent edge retention. It would be nice if someone would do a comparative ceramic-titanium /Talonite test of edge retention, ease of sharpening,price.
 
The Boker website ( https://www.bokerusa.com ) also fails to mention the ceramic component. Looking at the knife (very light in weight), the blade looks metallic, tho not polished like a normal forged blade. It'd be nice if they were more informative of the exact composition and proportions.

But more to the point is not the comparison of titanium blades to steel, but of this composite against the more expensive Talonite which I seem to remember being similarly low in hardness and relying on carbides embedded in a matrix to do its best cutting. If I recall correctly, Talonite was also limited in how well it held its edge geometry (measured by push cutting the blade), but continued to cut well (measured by how well it cut in a sawing motion), so a "razor edge" wasn't needed because the carbides act like micro serrations.

Did Talonite have similar concerns about being hard to sharpen?

As for brittleness, I'm game for a reasonable test. What would anyone suggest to test the brittleness of a kitchen knife that they would similarly expect of their Global or Henckels (or Talonite)? I suppose I could drop it in the sink.
 
mete said:
The same situation exists in the Talonite blade where the matrix of cobalt is relatively soft but the carbides give excellent edge retention. It would be nice if someone would do a comparative ceramic-titanium /Talonite test of edge retention, ease of sharpening,price.
Click to expand...

That was my interest too ... but I can't afford a Talonite kitchen knife, if one exists :)

- Longden
 
I cut around most truly hard material I meet in the kitchen. A few exceptions are light bones in fish and fowl and sometimes frozen foods. It would be common for me to use a knife to cut the head and tail off of a fish as big as a three pound salmon. I wouldn't cut through the wing or leg bones of a chicken, but I would split the breast in half (I might also cut a few ribs on a turkey carcass). There are times that I would split some frozen meat be stabbing into it and levering the edge of the blade into to bulk of the meat (I generally only do this with rather robust chef's knives, preferrably carbon steel, not stainless).

So the toughest thing I might try with a kitchen knife like this (and I probably wouldn't really do this in practice) would be to cut the head and tail off of frozen fish.
 
Hmmm ... good test ideas.

This being essentially a short chef's knife (almost like a santuko) and only 3 ounces in weight (total ... owing to the titanium), I might not be able to get the same momentum to chop clean thru a frozen fish as with a longer and heavier steel chef's knife. It might take a couple of whacks (assuming it lasts that long).

I'm tempted to believe that the material (cera-titan) has structural limitations if nothing else than because of the limited blade types they offered ... mostly short wide blades, even though a 10" slicer/carver (a much thinner blade) would seem a natural given its good slicing qualities.

Don't have anything like frozen whole fish around at the moment so I might have to check back later on this, since frozen hot dogs and fish fillets might not be a fair substitute :).
 
Blade weight is an important factor. I bought a plain titanium knife to experiment with. It wa s an 8" chefs knife .Of course it weighed 1/2 of a steel knife of the same size. I found a large difference in both slicing and chopping. I gave it to my girl friend and went back to my steel Henckels.
 
I generally don't chop the head and tail off of fish, I use a two-handed hard rocking push cut. With large frozen fish this may not work. So for this knife I would use either large unfrozen fish or smaller frozen fish. I sometimes use a heavy cleaver on the frozen stuff, but my wife doesn't like it when frozen fish heads fly across the kitchen.
 
Trout's probably too thin boned, right?

That's the only whole fish I've seen sold in the local markets lately, most of which only carry fillets (yes, I live in a sadly over-civilized area) ... unless I head out to the harbor. I'll have to see what they're hauling in over there.

The trout comes in a package of 4-5 (about 12"-14") ... maybe I can just do the heads/tails on each and then also fillet them afterwards.
 
I often see whole frozen salmon (well usually the head is off) in big horizontal freezers in big supermarkets. You can thaw or partially thaw the fish and cut the body crosswise into small steaks.

BTW, I thought you were in Ventura. Just go down to the beach and bum some mackeral from the surf fishermen.
 
Longden said:
A search on the forums shows some questions asked last year, but nothing subsequent. Has anyone else had a chance to play with this knife?
Click to expand...

I have used many of the "superalloy" materials [Liquid Metal, Talonite, Stellite 6K, Cast Cobalt by Boye, etc.], the edge retention can't compare to even a decent steel as the hardness is too low.

The carbides are of no consequence if the edge is not aligned, and an edge at 45 HRC will roll and dent far easier than one at 55-60 HRC regardless if the softer one is Talonite, Titanium, or made from pixie dust, forged under a Leprican's rainbow by Rumplestiltskin.

Nice looking blade though, and if the edge is ground nice and thin it should cut well. Titanium is a decent choice for kitchen knives as it doesn't rust, though you would be directly better off with AISI-420 at ~55 HRC. Phil Wilson makes nice kitchen knives out it, ground really thin.

He also uses lots of other steels if you want something harder to get more edge retention, all the way up to S90V for stainless, ~ 63 HRC and CPM-15V for not, ~ 65 HRC.

-Cliff
 
Thanks Cliff. I guess I'll leave the surf fishermen and their mackerel alone for now.

So if it's your opinion that the superalloy knives are uniformly poor performers in edge retention, what's the advantage (if any) of Talonite over Cera_Titan that might justify the high cost of the knives? I see a Talonite kitchen knife pair selling for $550

http://www.carbideprocessors.com/Knives/order.htm

and they're small knives at that ... compared to $60 for the Boker (which does cut well, BTW ... at least for now).

- Longden
 
The very soft cobalt alloys ~45 HRC have edge retention advantages in very wet enviroments, or if you want a semi-blunt edge which stays semi-blunt for a long time, as once the edge rolls a little it will stop rolling and then you see blunting by wear. However at this point you are down under 10% of optimal sharpness, based on cutting I have done on cardboard, ropes, woods and so.

Yes Talonite and company are expensive, they are difficult to work, dangerous in fact due to dust issues, and expensive - however in terms of end performance, I would much prefer AISI-420 HC to all of them. However there are super alloys like S90V which can offer superior performance because it can take a high hardness and high wear resistance at the same time. Though I would not argue that this is necessary for a kitchen knife.

The first serious high performance cutting kitchen knife I would recommend is this one :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/knives/japanese_utility_LV.html

It is also really cheap. The only two problems it has are :

1) not stainless so the edge can rust
2) laminated with a *soft* wrapper so it isn't rigid

This would make a very nice knife if you got a custom done in AISI 420 HC at ~ 55 HRC, or 440C at ~59 HRC as a decent step up, or S90V at 62-63 HRC if you really wanted to push it to the limit.

Phil Wilson uses all of these steels and his prices for plain kitchen knives start off decent for the simple alloys.

-Cliff
 
Despite Cliff and others low opinion of the NonSteel Carbide Matrix Blade materials a significant number of people are quite fond of Talonite and Stellite (LiquidMetal is a different category) because they do cut well and do not rust.

If Boker has managed to develop a low cost material with Carbides in a Titanium matrix I would imagine that the limiting factor to it's popularity will be the knife designs it is offered in.

I will not argue that Talonite, Stellite or Cera -Titan are the ultimate high performance blade materials especially for high impact chopping types of designs. However, I do believe that they have niches where they perform extremely well.

Two areas that come to mind are Neck Knives and small to medium hunting knives.

The Camillus Mini Talon and Talon are Talonite examples of these.

I gave my father a Camillus Talon that he has used on numerous deer and elk. He and several others have reported that the Talon will process significantly more animals than even high quality steel blades without sharpening. I believe that this performance can be at least partially attributed to the fact that the Talon is too small and light to be used for any chopping and therefore the knife's design contributes to it being used in a manner that allows the material to shine.

I have a Mini Talon that I carry in place of a folder as a small EDC and it cuts extremely well without sharpening and the fact that I do not have to worry about rust is a nice bonus. Again the design of the knife inherently limits use to applications where the material shines.
 
SDouglas said:
... they do cut well and do not rust.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone has argued that they rust readily nor contended cutting ability as that is due to how they are ground. Note however that they also have a *lower* potential than steel for cutting ability as since they are significantly weaker they must have thicker cross sections in order to function at a specific task. Are there Cobalt/Titanium knives that cut better than steel ones - sure, but such comparisons are never against high performance ground steel knives.

However the point could be made that for some tasks which are really low stress, like cutting meat and other really soft materials you could grind such alloys to optimal levels and even they would have the necessary strength to be functional because such cutting imposes such low levels of stress. However I have never seen anyone even propose such a blade would be functional in those alloys, let alone actually grind one. The thinnest of those blades is very club like compared to what you can get in steel.

As for rust resistance, try to get AISI 420 HC to rust readily. It won't unless you subject it to extended salt water soaks, and even then the rust is very slight, and it is much harder and stronger than the Cobalt/Titanium alloys. Spyderco has also experimented with several high rust resistance stainless steel alloys.

It should be mentioned here though that the Titaium alloys such as used by Mission due have one real advantage in that they are extremely tough, both in resistance to impacts and bending. In this way they far out perform the stainless cutlery steels and rival the better tool steels.

-Cliff
 
Cliff,

Sometimes your focus on "Optimal Cutting Ability" reminds me of the people that proved Aerodynamically that Bumble Bees cannot fly.

While it may very well be true that the Camillus Talon does not have the same cutting ability as an optimally ground and heat treated knife made of 420 HC the practical facts are that the Camillus Talon has adequate cutting ability for the tasks it was primarily designed for and retains that ability far longer than the majority of actual 420 HC blades readily available.

I just wish that this Cera-Titan material were readily available to Custom Knife Makers so that it's full potential could be explored.
 
SDouglas said:
While it may very well be true that the Camillus Talon does not have the same cutting ability as an optimally ground and heat treated knife made of 420 HC ...
Click to expand...

Note there is nothing magical about 420HC in this regard, it was just the lowest decent cutlery grade stainless steel that came to mind, the same would be said of AUS-6A, 440A, etc. . Of course the higher grade stainless steels like ATS-34, AUS-10A, BG-42 all allow even greater cutting ability if ground optimally. Of course you can also grind them so they cut poorly, but you don't buy those ones of course if you are interested in cutting ability. There are lots of inexpensive high performance cutting blades, one of the standard ones would be the A.G. Russell Deerhunter family which is offered in a line of steels, all the way up to D2.

-Cliff
 
I focussed on 420HC because you suggested that it had high Rust Resistance.

One of Talonite's properties is that it is totally impervious to rust.
 
SDouglas said:
I focussed on 420HC because you suggested that it had high Rust Resistance.
Click to expand...

"Suggested" ? You would actually argue against the corrosion resistance of 420 stainless? This has to be the furthest I have ever seen anyone go in promoting the Stellite alloys.

420HC was picked simply as it is one of the better known ones of that class which is very broad. Any similar stainless like 440A, AUS-6A, etc. are all very rust resistant, lots of other ones here like the Scandi ones and the new blends Spyderco and others are working with, in particular some of the nitrogen ones.

Even the higher carbon stainless steels like ATS-34 and so on resist rust well if finished properly with the right heat treatment. To get these to suffer significant edge blunting via oxidiation you need really abusive conditions like extended salt water soaks, and even this can't bother 420HC class steels.

But yes, Stellite is much more corrosion resistant than 420HC, or even AISI 420 (note the particular ones used in cutlery are not the best in this regard however). This I would argue isn't a practical advantage as how often do you hear people complaining about the high corrosion rates of those stainless steels, thus performance is being gained not in the bottleneck and is offset by the much lower hardness of Stellite alloys which results in much greater ease of denting, rolling and forces a need for a higher cross sectional area.

Ironically this is the exact area which people complain about in said stainless steels (they are too soft - typically ~5 HRC points lower than the ATS-34 class steels). Thus the Stellite alloys lower performance where it is needed (hardness) to increase performance where it is already in excess (corrosion resistance).

Of course there are some places where extreme corrosion resistance may be needed, for example in dive knives, but titatium would probably be a better choice there as it is much tougher than the stellite alloys. However I have even seen even S90V knives take repeated salt water exposure with no rust (fillet blade passed around on a warf for hours cutting through many cod), so again it takes extreme enviroments as S90V isn't one of the more stainless of the stainless cutlery steels.

-Cliff
 
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