Ceramic blade stock...where?

S

Scooter

Joined
Jul 13, 1999
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103
Could anyone tell me where one can purchase ceramic blade material. I'm looking for something fairly thin that I can laminate between some carbon fibre in a small folder.

Speaking of which, has anyone tried this idea out yet? What were your results?

Thanks in advance.

Darren
 
The ceramic blades like the ones made by boker are made of a man made material pretty much identical to the tiles used in the nosecone of space shuttles. It rates above pretty much everything but diamond on the mohs scale. To my knowledge, theres really no way to work with it aside form all diamond tooling, and the majority of the shaping is done by molding it before it goes into the kiln for a couple days at over 3000 degrees. I don't think you can buy it anywhere, in raw stock. And I'm not sure that even an above average knife shop is equiped to work with the stuff :(
Its a neat idea thats been tossed around here several times before but I don't remember it ever panning out, or anyone even getting a start.
Unfortunately I haven't gotten to handle knives made with either one, but from all the reviews here, I'd say that talonite or stelite are really superior to ceramic as a blade material anyhow. They won't stain/rust, hold an edge for a long time, can be sharpened easily, and are stronger. Thats just my opinion though.
 
Thanks Matt,

I was kinda wondering about working ceramic. Although I wonder what Kyocera ceramic blades are like. I was thinking that if the material is thin enough it shouldn't take too much to grind an edge down with a decent quality belt.

Just a thought.

I'll investigate the Talonite angle. See if there is some really think stock. I just want to make a very light, thin pocket knife; it doesn't need to be super tough.

Thanks again.

Darren
 
Scooter
Crock sticks appear to be a very similar material although they are round. They can be ground down using a carborundum grinding wheel which is a similar hardness (9 on the mohs scale ie as hard as a saphire/ruby) however it does tend to chip a lot. On thinner material like a knife blade it would probably break. Far easier to use diamond. Your sander belts are probably silicon carbide they might be carborundum, the silicon carbide would not be up to the job at all.
I dont know why you'd want to grind down the Kyocera blades, they are pretty thin already.
If your making a folding knife make sure you use a diamond drill or diamond dust(you can get this from a lapidairy supplier) to drill the pivot hole otherwise you will crack the material.
 
I have ground boker ceramic blades on cheap AO belts on a simple 1" belt sander. I had to repair a couple of small blades for a friend that were really torn up, broken points, badly chipped blades etc. . Of course this is no where near the level of stock removal you would have to do to actually shape a blade, but it can be done. I would imagine higher quality and of course wider belts would make it go much faster obviously.

In regards to strength, the ceramic in those blades are far stronger than Talonite / Stellite and thus it has a strong advantage in regards to resisting edge roll. As well the wear resistance is pretty extreme, above even the super alloys. However it does have a rather extreme limitation in regards to toughness which means your working cross section is going to be high unless you are restricting the work to really light use.

Note ceramic composites which are used in some blades are very different from plain ceramics, they are to ceramics what steel is to iron. I have seen 2mm thick ceramic composite resist multiple heavy blows from a framing hammer.

-Cliff
 
Thanks for the responses.

What I was originally thinking was to get some thin ceramic stock (say 1/16" +/-) and laminating it between some carbon fibre. The thin ceramic would make up the cutting edge and the carbon fibre give it some backbone. I don't have any intension of grinding down a Kyocera blade, what am was/am looking for is a source for the "raw" ceramic.

On another topic, where are people getting Talonite now. I went to Mr. Simonich's site but can't find a link to buy anything other than his blades. Stellite international seem to be the only listing I can find for supplies. Is this correct?

Thanks

Darren
 
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