Sharpening Ceramic Knives
Megan is very fond of her Miyako ceramic chefs knife. It has dulled over time. I’m having trouble finding someone that can sharpen a ceramic knife. I found a place in Marin but I don’t visit there often. Blah. I wrote Miyako for sharpening advice and they offered me a discount on a new knife and also said that Kyocera makes a home sharpener “…but we found it inconsistent”. Blah. Too much trouble. I’ll stick with steel knives and my Accusharp sharpener.
Ceramic knives are pretty wild when they’re brand new and used for slicing, but for general kitchenery, they’re problematic. A hard blade takes a keener edge, but loses it just as fast, and the ceramic is brittle enough to make sharpening a bit fraught. You can’t use sharpening jigs designed for steel blades, because the angle is wrong, and you can’t use normal stones, they have nearly the same hardness as the blade. Diamond hones in the ~800-1200 grit range seem to be in the sweet spot.
If Megan is willing to work for ceramic knives, I’d suggest buying a diamond hone and another knife. Practice on the old knife and you’ll have the knack long before the new one needs servicing. I also really, really recommend getting a black ceramic blade over the more common white ceramic. There’s an extra step in the sintering that makes them much more resilient to chipping.
I carried a ceramic knife for a few months as my main working edge, but the difficulty in sharpening and added fragility sent me back to the mid-exotic stainless steel blades. I’ve used the bottom of a coffee cup or the edge of a curb to sharpen my knife in a pinch, and if you ever attempt to baton kindling with a ceramic blade you’ll be left holding a bare handle. I actually carry a fixed blade knife now because I can get away with using it for things that wore the pivots out of every folding blade I’ve put to edc duty.