Thread: Super Sharp Ceramic Razors?

A company called Kyocera has popularized the use of "advanced ceramics" for cutting tools, like kitchen knives etc. do some research if you want a bit more technical info, but the basic premise is the there are a few types of newly discovered ceramics that stay sharper much longer than even the best steel (high carbon and stainless). Thus outperforming nearly all other knives on the market. In fact they rank "2nd to diamonds in hardness" as quoted from the Kyocera website.

The drawback is that they are brittle , and are not suitable for all cutting tasks like cutting through bone, prying meat off of bones, etc. which are fairly uses common for kitchen cutlery, thus making them somewhat undesirable.

My question is to you razor-meisters that have experienced the ultimates in razordom: would there be a market for a razor made of this extremely hard, fine, sharp ceramic? and at what price?

I've got a few sources for the material to try and make some prototypes, and will report back if there's any interest.

Thanks for your help guys!

If I drop any of my straights I have a fighting chance that they will survive, but with ceramic I would be nervous just setting the razor down let alone dropping it! The idea is neat but I don't think it has a place here.
Maybe other members feel differently!?

The stay sharper much longer statement does it for me, how long is that and as JMS stated above, in my klutz hands, it will get broke
I don't think I would buy one unless they were at "DISPOSABLE" prices!!!!!

It's hard to imagine they could be smooth shavers, but I'd certainly be interested if someone produced one.

I don't think it would work. Ceramic is sharp, yet very brittle so it's unforgiving of mistakes. If you can prototype it, I'd love to hear the results. Sign me up as a tester!

ceramic is sharp but SS or carbon are sharper i doubt you will get a top shave from ceramic
only thing that hones it is diamond and you have to hone a long time it's that hard
if you drop it it breaks like glass and even if you only chip it it still gonna take very long to sharpen it unless you do it with power tools
kyocera says that you have send your kitchen knife back to have it sharpen

This has been brought up before. Its the delicate nature of the edge, imagine a ceramic edge so thin it wouldn't take much to chip it and then what do you do? You can't hone it you have to send it back. Also I think there was an issue with the comfort factor of a ceramic blade.

Well I'll try play the devil's advocate a bit

The issue of dropping the razor isn't really worse than for kitchen knives, and I believe they are quite popular, if a lot more expensive than regular kitchen knives. I'd certainly like a couple for the kitchen :-) (ok, so the dedrease in utility of a dropped razor is probably bigger than for a dropped kitchen knife). However, as far as I'm concerned it's already with steel razors potentially quite bad if you drop it, so depending on how bad one considers that it is perhaps not incrementally much worse to drop a ceramic razor.

As for the honing, it seems that many of us already use diamond based honing tools, so in principle that would enable honing of any material that isn't as hard as diamond ? I grant that the hardness of a ceramic material must require many strokes to remove the same volume of material off the edge than is the case for softer material such as carbon steel. However because of that same hardness the wear is likely to be correspondingly smaller. But for extremely brittle materials, chipping may be a problem, I couldn't say.

If indeed for whatever reason it would not be possible to hone the thing oneself, it would have to be extremely durable - the quality of the shave decreases fast with decreasing sharpness, much more so than does the utility of kitchen knives. In addition I think the one of the attractions of a straight razor is the element of preparing the shaving edge oneself, customizing it until it is just right.

Too easy to break. Too hard to sharpen. I'd pass until the ceramic technology gets a whole lot better.

Yeah, I have had all of these concerns in the back of my mind, trying to reserve judgment until a prototype is up and running.

it just seems to me that one may be able to play with the edge geometry a little to make up for the brittleness of the ceramic; for example, make the cutting edge angle a little more obtuse than a standard razor, just enough to decrease the chance of flagrant chipping.

The appeal to me (and possibly many others) is that there would be minimal upkeep needed, no stropping, no rusting, and much longer between honings... if it can be made to work.

And it would seem to me that no stropping and less cleaning means less handling in general which means a decreased chance of dropping it.

though I may be wrong, I could see only needing a good flat piece of hardwood with diamond honing compound to keep it in shape, barring any large chips that would require regrinding

But I can see how this might all be a load of crap, but you never know till you try, right?