How To Choose Kitchen Knives
What About The Alternatives To Steel?

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There are several alternatives to steel in kitchen cutlery. Certain alloys out there, true stainless stuff, such as Titanium alloys, Talonite. Those are not steels, but are used in cutlery. Though their edge holding abilities are not close to that of a quality steel, and they are quite expensive too.

Talonite

 - I've been using custom Talonite knife in my kitchen for a while, but then gave up. I didn't really care for its stainlessness, and it was rather soft for serious cutting, while being too thick for delicate cutting, although held the edge well on soft materials. Besides Talonite there is also Stelite 6K abd 6B used in the cutlery. Ref - Talonite, Stelite 6K and 6B alloy composition comparison.

Titanium

 - As far as I know Boker has produced titanium kitchen knife. I haven't had it, but generally Ti is to soft to make a quality knife. yes, there are Ti knives out there, but those are very specialized knives, used in environments requiring non magnetic tools, or highly corrosive. I suspect your kitchen isn't quite that demanding, and the compromise in cutting performance and edge holding is pointless then.

Ceramics

 - is another alternative. Non-metallic, holds edge very long time, although thatstatement is true only for ideal conditions. Otherwise, they chip and therefore dull. I couldn't really create those ideal conditions in my kitchen lab and it is unlikely an average kitchen knfie user can do that, or will be willing to spend money and time for that effort. If used carefully, theoretically it is almost an ideal knife for soft food preparation, as most of the food is soft stuff, where knife wear resistance and edge strength matters the most. However for now ceramics are too brittle for many kitchen cutting jobs. No prying, no chopping, no dropping either, or you may have to say bye-bye to your precious, literally :) Ceramic knives cost quite a bit, comparable or higher than high-end steel knives. However, no metallic taste if you care :)
    Major beef I have with ceramic knives is that they're disproportionally difficult to sharpen compared to edge holding, which is higher than any steel, but not as high given the efforts to sharpen them. Yes, you can sharpen ceramic knives at home, just need proper tools, that is diamond abrasives and a steady hand or guided sharpener. Another problem is that ceramics never gets as sharp as a good steel. So, those two are the reasons I gave up on ceramics. The idea is good, but today implementation isn't quite there. There's more detailed overview of the ceramic knives use inthe kitchen and problems associated with that in the - Kyocera OK-45 Utility Kitchen Knife Review.

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Last updated - 05/19/19