Using nice pocket knives as cuttlery in a pinch. Edge damage?

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Morthawt

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May 30, 2017
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As you may know, a typical knife you use at the table rarely seems to go dull, but they are not exactly what I would call sharp to begin with. I am interested in experiences/information you have on how detrimental it is to the edge, to use a pocket knife in an eating context, where it may be hitting a ceramic dinner plate.

Lets say a decent steel like 12C27 or CPM S90V for a higher end pocket knife. How would such example knife steels, sharpened for typical EDC usage (30-40 degree inclusive), work in such a ceramic-hitting context?

Would there be little to no impact on the edge? Serious damage requiring work? I am curious about experiences or info you have on this.

Thanks
 
Have no experience with it (don't often utilize my knives for that outside of cutting up an apple, etc. here and there...), but I assume there are a lot of variables at play: what type of edge do you have on it already? toothy? hair shaving? how much pressure are you applying when making your cuts? etc.
 
On my current edc (Manly Wasp) It's sharpened on 1000 grit and stropped on basic leather for a short time. So I would say somewhat toothy but not raggedly toothy. I am just trying to build up a picture of what would happen if I decided to get even more use out of my knife by having it scrape across and lightly hit ceramic with normal eating usage when using normal ceramic dinner plates.

I use plain edge with no fancy micro bevels or anything.
 
A sharp knife edge is a couple thousands of a millimeter wide at the Apex. If that skinny metal crashes into the harder ceramic, and I would call even a light touch a "crash" given the proportions, the blade being from 12C27 or CPM S90V doesn't matter. The spot that touches ceramic will be dull and in need of resharpening.

If you want to cut with a sharp knife on ceramic, use a fully serrated one. The tips of the serrations will dull, but the curves between them stay sharp.
 
Interesting. Thanks. It seems like I may need to just be careful if I want to use it to cut up food on such a plate. I suppose until knives come in CPM Adamantium, lol, then caution is needed. I suppose like my old time normal knife I use in the kitchen being a non issue, is I don't use it for anything other than cutting up food, so if it goes "dull" it still cuts food and is soft metal so over a few months I quickly give it a tweak and it's good to go again. But a pocket knife has a higher and broader standard of requirements on it for it's effectiveness.
 
My regular table knives are serrated, no problem there. But for slicing a fine cut of meat, I use a nice Henkel steak knife I "borrowed" from my mother-in-law. It requires regular sharpening from contact with the plate.
 
TheEdge01 said:
I usually grab kitchen knives for food and use my carry knives for everything else.
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This usually works, but I've been to restaurants before, and my fine, medium rare rib-eye usually comes with an insult of a steak knife. Fortunately, I always have some sort of traditional pocket jewelry with me, and using the method I described above, the red meat is parted easily and with minimal fuss. Then I wash it (the knife) in hot water at home, and dry it, and admire the new colors in the patina. :D
 
I do
Morthawt said:
I am interested in experiences/information you have on how detrimental it is to the edge, to use a pocket knife in an eating context, where it may be hitting a ceramic dinner plate.
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I do this all the time. Its not worth worrying about. Eat, clean it, put it away. The plates are not as hard as you think. The ceramic is hard, the glaze protecting the ceramic is not. As long as you aren't chopping away at your steak its not as bad as it sounds.
 
Arathol said:
I do

I do this all the time. Its not worth worrying about. Eat, clean it, put it away. The plates are not as hard as you think. The ceramic is hard, the glaze protecting the ceramic is not. As long as you aren't chopping away at your steak its not as bad as it sounds.
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The glaze is similar to glass, and is usually composed of silica, just like glass. I worked at a ceramics company. The glaze is as hard as the ceramic, if not harder.
 
i never ever use my EDC knives on a ceramic plate.

as soon as you touch the plate with the edge it will be dull, very dull.
it actually doesn't matter if you knife is Rex 121, S110V or cheap steel, no steel can stand up to the hardness of ceramic.

the reason your regular dinner knives don't seem to dull from cutting on a plate is that they already are dull.
 
Lapedog said:
But what if you cut on a marble table and the edge goes straight through the paper plate and hits the table! :eek:

Bamboo or wood plates!
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Bamboo has silica in it bad for blades very bad . Don't know about you but can't remember going to restaurant with marble table's .
 
I cut mine with my pocket knives quite a few times. I dont saw like I'm trying to get through a log so there isn't much plate contact overall.
 
LEGION 12 said:
Bamboo has silica in it bad for blades very bad . Don't know about you but can't remember going to restaurant with marble table's .
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No but sometimes I’m eating on the kitchen counter. I guess at home I would just use my own kitchen knives anyway. Though since the op could use the provided restaurant knife it seemed to me that he specifically wanted to use his edc.

Didn’t know sbout the silica thing. I guess all those people saying bamboo makes the best cutting board were wrong again!
 
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