Show HN: I built a knife steel comparison tool

thanks for the feedback

Being soft or brittle can also make forming a sharp edge difficult, requiring very light pressure in the final phases of sharpening to remove or avoid creating a burr in the case of softness, and to avoid chipping in the case of brittleness.

Of course all of these properties are affected by the heat treatment, which is often more important to the performance of the knife than the composition of the steel.

A harder blade is more brittle (less tough) and keeps its edge longer... but is also more difficult to sharpen once it gets dull.... generally speaking.

H1

H2

CPM Magnacut

Sandvik 12C27

Interestingly they are all weak on Edge Retention.

I have a lot of knives (and have made my own) and I love ceramic knives. For those that don't know, ceramic knives are sintered zirconium dioxide; they are super sharp and retain sharpness far better than steel, but are brittle and not practical to resharpen. As a result your average knife enthusiast tries them, sees that they chip easily and can't be fixed, and condemn them as throwaway garbage.

The secret is to use them for an application where they'll never hit something hard or rough. For example, using them where they might hit metal or bone, they'll eventually chip - possibly into your food! Or using them on a cutting board, they'll dull, although slower than steel. But use them on soft objects only and they'll last virtually forever.

They are very useful for cutting cardboard boxes open, or tape, or plastic. You can use the same ceramic knife for 1000+ cardboard boxes and it will cut like a hot knife in butter, while the same steel knife would need to be resharpened several times for the same smoothness.

Oh, and they are non-browning for food like apples or avocados, which is nice. The browning you see in cut foods is caused partly by polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that can be activated by iron and other metals. Steel knives shed tiny amounts of iron into food as they cut, so if you use a ceramic knife, your food will look fresher for longer.

They're great for minimizing oxidation along cuts. E.g. cutting iceberg lettuce and avoiding having the edges turn brown. They're also very lightweight, which is nice for some things, while being bad for others. I'd never use them the way I do my workhorse chef's knife, but there are certainly tasks I prefer them for. Dicing lots of hot peppers comes to mind, oddly enough, as does some very precise and relatively tedious knifework like making very even matchstick cuts for carrots/radishes/etc (the large one has a very wide blade, which is great for this, and is lightweight enough to reduce fatigue).

Overall, I can see why folks like them. It's not really the "no need to sharpen" point. It's more the "lightweight and very thin" part, along with a non-oxidizing edge.

I'm still kind of opposed on principle, I suppose, but I do use the set we were gifted fairly often, despite having some very nice steel cutlery that I'm very fond of. I can't blame anyone for buying them now that they're priced more reasonably than they used to be.

And you can sharpen all your paring knives etc.

Also - paring knife, not pairing knife.

Sharpness is a product of sharpening, which should be done regularly for good results.

Benchmade's pricing is based on irrational customers being willing to pay premium prices for knives that really aren't competitive anymore.

If you want a replacement knife that's very similar for a more reasonable price, consider the crossbar lock version of the Vosteed Raccoon.

It used to be knowledge based survival skills, but today it is all gear based survival skills. Prices have gone crazy.