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ceramic blades
- Thread starter eco
- Start date
Bronco
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Welcome, eco. Probably your best bet would be to use a diamond hone like the ones sold by DMT and other companies. They'll grind the ceramic with no problem. Just remember not to try and hone the edge too thin.
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Semper Fi
-Bill
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Semper Fi
-Bill
- Joined
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- 2,639
I think Bronco has the right idea. Although I have no ceramic blades, and have not tried to resharpen one, it is obvious that you need something Harder and more wear resistant than the ceramic material of your blade. That means most sharpening stones, including ceramic stones, will not be effective or efficient. You need something harder in order to abrade the ceramic material in your blade edge. That pretty much excludes everything except Diamonds. A diamond stone, or several grades of diamond stones, are probably your only reasonable option for resharpening by hand. Good luck
Paracelsus
[This message has been edited by Paracelsus (edited 11-02-2000).]
Paracelsus
[This message has been edited by Paracelsus (edited 11-02-2000).]
Welcome to the forums, eco. Make yourself at home.
Lansky, Eze-lap and DMT sell pretty good diamond hones. As Bronco Bill suggested, this is probably the only way you're going to sharpen your ceramic blades without digging a hole in your sharpening stones.
Remember that ceramic is brittle and behaves differently to any type of steel. Don't expect any burrs to form, leave the angle a little bit thicker than you would on a steel blade of similar thickness, and try to be very patient. Grinding down something as hard as ceramic will take along time by hand.
Alternatively, if you have a bench grinder with fine stones or something similar, you can use that, since the ceramic is not going to lose its temper. Saves you some time.
As you are new here, I'm not sure how much experience you have in sharpening. A little background might help to focus the answers to something more useful to you. At the same time, I would like to direct your attention to the fine FAQ that Joe Talmadge has put up on sharpening. Then, there is a lot of information held in all the archives. A search should turn up quite a lot of useful info.
Lansky, Eze-lap and DMT sell pretty good diamond hones. As Bronco Bill suggested, this is probably the only way you're going to sharpen your ceramic blades without digging a hole in your sharpening stones.
Remember that ceramic is brittle and behaves differently to any type of steel. Don't expect any burrs to form, leave the angle a little bit thicker than you would on a steel blade of similar thickness, and try to be very patient. Grinding down something as hard as ceramic will take along time by hand.
Alternatively, if you have a bench grinder with fine stones or something similar, you can use that, since the ceramic is not going to lose its temper. Saves you some time.
As you are new here, I'm not sure how much experience you have in sharpening. A little background might help to focus the answers to something more useful to you. At the same time, I would like to direct your attention to the fine FAQ that Joe Talmadge has put up on sharpening. Then, there is a lot of information held in all the archives. A search should turn up quite a lot of useful info.
eco,
SiC (Silicon Carbide) can also be used to resharpen ceramic blades.
Steelwolf,
Providing you do it very carefully, this is possible. I remember Kevin McClung said somewhere a long time ago in KFC that he grinded MirageX knives with low RPM grinder. I couldn't find the thread though.
SiC (Silicon Carbide) can also be used to resharpen ceramic blades.
Steelwolf,
Providing you do it very carefully, this is possible. I remember Kevin McClung said somewhere a long time ago in KFC that he grinded MirageX knives with low RPM grinder. I couldn't find the thread though.
Thanks for the info. The brittleness of ceramics has been one of my main concerns. It would seem to me that with to little of an angle on the edge, it would be prone to chipping of the edge. Any dieas on how much of an angle might be okay?
ernie
Bye the way, I'm mostly interested in folders. Been fascinated by them ever since hanging out with my grandfathers - two old farmers and home carpenters.
ernie
Bye the way, I'm mostly interested in folders. Been fascinated by them ever since hanging out with my grandfathers - two old farmers and home carpenters.
Bronco
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Just try as best you can to follow the grind angle that the manufacturer has established and you should be okay. Most of the companies like Boker, Mad Dog and Kyocera have done quite a bit of testing on their own with edge angles to try and strike a good balance between durability and cutting efficiency.
A handy trick I picked up on here in the forums is to mark the very edge of the blade you're sharpening with a marking pen of some sort so that you can see immediately exactly where you're removing material. I'm not sure how well a standard marker will show up against the black color of many of the ceramics in use today, but if you experiment a little you should be able to come up with something. Good luck.
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Semper Fi
-Bill
A handy trick I picked up on here in the forums is to mark the very edge of the blade you're sharpening with a marking pen of some sort so that you can see immediately exactly where you're removing material. I'm not sure how well a standard marker will show up against the black color of many of the ceramics in use today, but if you experiment a little you should be able to come up with something. Good luck.
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Semper Fi
-Bill
- Joined
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- 5,891
We had one in a restaurant kitchen I once worked in. We used to fling things around pretty hard & nobody (especially me) trusted themselves w/ the ceramic knife- nobody wanted to be the one responsible for breaking it. As a result it never got dull enough to sharpen. Used it a couple of times & it cut pretty well, but the fact that it had to be "babied" bugged me a little & nobody wanted to go hunt down diamond stones when we could sharpen everything else on a regular stone. Maybe the "new" ceramics are better- Mad Dog Knives boasts a pretty tough ceramic blade, but for some reason, I'm still not 100% convinced that the extra care/sharpening is worth the trouble.
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"Never give a sword to a man who can't dance" (Celtic Proverb)
AKTI# A000107
[This message has been edited by Rugger (edited 11-03-2000).]
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"Never give a sword to a man who can't dance" (Celtic Proverb)
AKTI# A000107
[This message has been edited by Rugger (edited 11-03-2000).]
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Don't know if it was just a marketing ploy , but all the ceramic bladed knives I've seen were clearly advertised as having to be sent back to the maker to be sharpened. You know "DO NOT TRY TO SHARPEN THIS KNIFE YOURSELF, SEND IT TO , YADDA YADDA YADDA." Anyhow I took that to mean that it took special equipment.
The diamond stones will be able to cut the ceramic but I have my doubts about the effectiveness. The ceramics used for knives and sharpening stones are way up there in the 9's on the moh's scale. Very close to diamonds. So its going to be slow cutting. And unless they've made a drastic improvement in diamond stones since I looked at them (about a week ago)the diamonds are sprayed onto a backing plate with a nickel bonding agent. And the nickel is much much softer than the ceramic. I've got a diamond stick for sharpening serrations somewhere thats about wore out. The diamonds don't wear out but they do get rubbed off. I think you would experience this much faster sharpening a ceramic blade.
The company that makes the knives should have some way of polishing the edge better than you can get with the ultra fine diamond stones. They do a good job but still don't leave as fine an edge as a lot of other natural and man made stones do.( ceramic being one of them) Any how no more often than a ceramic blade should require sharpening I think I would take the time to send it to the maker for sharpening. Even if it costs a few bucks its cheaper than replacing the knife and or diamond stones if somthing goes wrong. And it sould hold its edge for looong time.
If you do decide to try it. I would try making the final passes with the finest diamond stone you can find, and making them lengthwise. That way the scratch pattern doesn't break up the edge as much. Its a tricvk I figured out when I was young and learning how to sharpen.No one ever showed me, jsut gavbe me my first knife and a soapstone that cam with it. I found that it got much sharper makign lengthwise passes because the stone wasn't all that fine, but it took much longer. Now I have better stones and sharpen like everyone else.
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It'll feel better when it stops hurting.
The diamond stones will be able to cut the ceramic but I have my doubts about the effectiveness. The ceramics used for knives and sharpening stones are way up there in the 9's on the moh's scale. Very close to diamonds. So its going to be slow cutting. And unless they've made a drastic improvement in diamond stones since I looked at them (about a week ago)the diamonds are sprayed onto a backing plate with a nickel bonding agent. And the nickel is much much softer than the ceramic. I've got a diamond stick for sharpening serrations somewhere thats about wore out. The diamonds don't wear out but they do get rubbed off. I think you would experience this much faster sharpening a ceramic blade.
The company that makes the knives should have some way of polishing the edge better than you can get with the ultra fine diamond stones. They do a good job but still don't leave as fine an edge as a lot of other natural and man made stones do.( ceramic being one of them) Any how no more often than a ceramic blade should require sharpening I think I would take the time to send it to the maker for sharpening. Even if it costs a few bucks its cheaper than replacing the knife and or diamond stones if somthing goes wrong. And it sould hold its edge for looong time.
If you do decide to try it. I would try making the final passes with the finest diamond stone you can find, and making them lengthwise. That way the scratch pattern doesn't break up the edge as much. Its a tricvk I figured out when I was young and learning how to sharpen.No one ever showed me, jsut gavbe me my first knife and a soapstone that cam with it. I found that it got much sharper makign lengthwise passes because the stone wasn't all that fine, but it took much longer. Now I have better stones and sharpen like everyone else.
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It'll feel better when it stops hurting.
Bronco
Moderator
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- 7,585
I have sharpened Boker ceramic blades with a DMT diamond hone and it worked fine. Although it sounds counterintuitive, I've experienced very little wear to my diamond hone when sharpening ceramics. I think that precisely because the ceramic is so hard, it tends to ride more on the tops of the diamonds and thus has a harder time flowing around and getting down inbetween the diamonds to attack the nickel substrate (as can happen with very soft steels). Your mileage may vary, as they say, but thankfully I haven't had any problems with this combination.
But, as Matt has said, the frequency between required sharpenings of a ceramic blade is normally so great, it can't hurt to send it in and let the manufacturer do the work.
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Semper Fi
-Bill
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Semper Fi
-Bill