Per Jason's comments about the 'feel' of how the ceramic's abrasive struggles to cut the carbides:
I always had the sensation that ceramics tended to 'skate' across high-carbide steels without getting much bite. I used to notice it with some steels way back when I didn't understand the mechansim of what was happening while using a ceramic, and it always bugged me. I sort of equate the sensation to that of a snow shovel skating across the aggregate pebbles in the surface of concrete, or even how one's shoe might 'skate' over a polished floor if there's a thumbtack stuck in the sole of the shoe. Also similar to how ceramics feel when they get severely loaded up and don't bite the steel anymore.
I don't like to use ceramics on high-vanadium steel at all anymore, for the above reasons. I tend to believe a more suitable abrasive (diamond/cbn) will always do a better job, especially at the refining end when the size of the carbides starts to be an additional obstacle to an abrasive not hard enough to cut or shape them cleanly. That means if I'm looking to finish the bevels at a similar polish as a Fine/UF ceramic might give on other less wear-resistant steels, I'll likely choose something like an EF/EEF diamond hone instead.
David
