To negotiate the best possible price for our customers, we agree to hide prices prior to logging in.
321 requests
Product Description
Ceramic blades are becoming more and more popular in kitchens around the world for their high hardness, rust resistance, and ability to hold an edge. The folks over at Kyocera have found a way to make ceramic even better with their proprietary Hot Isostatically Pressed (HIP) process, resulting in ceramic that will last up to 10 times longer than high-carbon steel Read More
I had bought my mother the Kyotop santoku as a present about 10 years ago, and paid $238 for it.
She loved that knife, but my idiot brother dropped it on the floor and snapped the tip off, so now it looks more like a cleaver than anything. Very sharp and durable edge, definitely tougher than the white Kyocera knives.
This is the one use for ceramic knives for which I have found no equal: these blades cause no accelerated oxidation to cut vegetables. I use these types of knives specifically for salad prep for the weeks ahead. I chop my salads into extra fine pieces on the weekend. I chop kale, cabbage, and carrots. When I use a ceramic knife, I can chop and store cabbage and kale for 3-4 weeks with no browning (seriously none at all) as long as I store the chopped veges in an air tight container in the fridge. When I want a salad, I just scoop the pre-cut ingredients into a bowel and add meat, cheese and dressing. It takes 1 minute to make a salad once the ingredients are chopped and ready to go. Because it's chopped so fine, chewing is minimal during the work lunch. Keeping cut veges for 3-4 weeks without browning is not something I can do with any steel knife.
As a cook all ceramic knives are soo fragile... I've bought lot of them a few years ago a no one stayed clean & sharp. Today I dont even understand what could make you buy a ceramic knife vs a steel knife if you're a Cooking Enthusiast .
It looks like the Kyocera Electric Diamond knife sharpener cannot be used with the sashimi or paring knives, probably due to issues with blade length.
" Not recommended for the following Kyocera knives: KT-075-HIP-D, KT-200-HIP-D, FK-181 WH, FK-125N WH or BK. "
This looks like a standard black yttria-stabilized zirconia with laser etching to create the damascus pattern. It may be an ATZ grade (alumina-toughened zirconia), given the claims of extra hardness.
HIP (hot isostatic pressing) is just an additional step where the already sintered ceramic is reheated to a high temperature under an applied high pressure to squeeze out internal defects such as voids (common defect from powder pressing). This increases strength substantially. HIP makes it much more resistant to accidental chipping and fracture, but I don't think it increases hardness substantially.
The literature claims this is Z206, probably a grade with a really fine zirconia particle size; Kyocera does not offer material specs for this grade. It's probably closest to the Z701N in terms of properties. I have sanded these types of zirconias in the past using carbide sandpaper, but it takes a lot of work to remove material. If you look at their technical ceramic specs, you can see that high purity aluminum oxide, carbides, and of course diamond are all harder than zirconia.
Kyocera offers an automatic diamond knife sharpener on their site...not sure how good it is. I think that the issue here is that the edge develops microscopic chips and wear over time and does not form a burr during sharpening. You basically have to form a perfect bevel and finish with really fine diamond to ensure a good edge.
The sashimi knife is really cool, but not practical as a multi use kitchen knife. The single bevel edge takes some getting used to but it works great to cut things as thin as you can.