Ceramic Kitchen Blades - Kitchen Gadgets + Gear 1

Kyocera Advanced Ceramics is a maker of kitchen gear, tools, and office items, including knives, scissors, peelers, mandolines and more. (They also make ballpoint pens.) If you’re wondering why the diversity, and what is the common element, it’s ceramics, as the name suggests.

But this isn’t your grandmother’s ceramics. This stuff is “advanced” ceramics, and Kyocera says that zirconium oxide (aka zirconia) and aluminum oxide to give their products strength. Zirconia is used to cubic zirconium, which is a diamond substitute.

Chef Ming Tsai swears by Kyocera’s chef’s knives, and used them regularly in his TV cooking show East Meets West, amongst others. Ceramic blades apparently retain their edges for months without sharpening, and do not bend and pit like metal. They are not invincible, and can chip or snap if used to cut into bone, or used on a marble surface.

The drawback is that when you eventually do need to sharpen them, you either have to mail your knife to Kyocera, or find a qualified knife shop that has a diamond sharpening wheel. While there are ceramic knife sharpening rods, they are used to sharpen metals knives.

Kyocera is not the only ceramic knife blade maker. Boker of Solingen, Germany also makes a line of ceramic kitchen knives.

Sources: Kyocera Advanced Ceramics; eCeramics FAQ, Boker.