05-21-2018, 10:07 AM
Thanks for the input KG. Yes, there is little doubt, if you put my brain in a duck he'd fly sideways. We sharpened our ceramic blade with the rotary sharpener we were developing and a 30 micron SC disc. We have had a fair amount of experience using SC to grind 45° bevels on ceramic optical ferrules. The ferrules were zirconia and have no idea what the knife was. We took it from 350 to 300 in pretty short order and quit at that point having proven what we wanted to prove... ceramic knives can be sharpened. I suspect that ceramic knife manufacturers produce these edges at the sharpness level they are for a reason. The thinner the edge, the more susceptible to chipping they become.
Now there's another sideways thought of mine. Chipping. From an aesthetic standpoint, not good. From a practical standpoint, what's the big deal? The Exchange recently featured several pages on a new product that was designed to put chips (or dents at least) in a steel knife edge under the premise that it made the knife cut better. Whether chips/dents make edges cut better or not, it would seem that the affected area of the cutting edge would be a very small percentage of the total in typical cases.
Seems to me KG that if you could put your commercial customer's knife at 200-250 and it just stayed there for a week without maintenance intervals (edge straightening) that it might be a good thing. Might not as well, but knowing you, you'll figure out if it is or isn't in fairly short order.
I'm assuming that there was no burr to be removed after sharpening. Am I assuming correctly? Wonder if there is any problem putting "tooth" in a ceramic edge. 250 with tooth is a lethal weapon in my estimation.
Now there's another sideways thought of mine. Chipping. From an aesthetic standpoint, not good. From a practical standpoint, what's the big deal? The Exchange recently featured several pages on a new product that was designed to put chips (or dents at least) in a steel knife edge under the premise that it made the knife cut better. Whether chips/dents make edges cut better or not, it would seem that the affected area of the cutting edge would be a very small percentage of the total in typical cases.
Seems to me KG that if you could put your commercial customer's knife at 200-250 and it just stayed there for a week without maintenance intervals (edge straightening) that it might be a good thing. Might not as well, but knowing you, you'll figure out if it is or isn't in fairly short order.
I'm assuming that there was no burr to be removed after sharpening. Am I assuming correctly? Wonder if there is any problem putting "tooth" in a ceramic edge. 250 with tooth is a lethal weapon in my estimation.