I just had a Chicago Cutlery blade snap in two while cutting a piece of cheese. No twisting or flexing. Upon inspection there was a small (1 mm) brown dot on the face of the blade with a brown halo around it. Inside the break it looked like the corrosion had spread through about 1/2 the blade. Did this start at an inculsion in the steel? I have another CC knife with the exact same mark on the face and I expect it to snap any day. I've also seen a Sabatier (sp?) slicer do the same thing... small dot on face turns to major corrosion inside. Sort of like the mole that mushrooms into a giant cancer inside. I've also ground a few blades and found small (0.5 mm) gas bubbles in the steel that appear right on the edge. The nick is perfectly round and when viewed with a jewellers loupe really looks like a gas bubble. I've seen this gas bubble twice, once on a SAK (Victornox) that was ~20 years old and on a piece of high quality commercial kitchen cutlery. I guess what I'm driving at is that most steels are pretty non-homogeneous and have gas pockets and bits of carbon and other crystals in the matrix. Comments?
