What materials, other than metal, can be used to make a really sharp knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “real sharp knife“
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Written by: Bella
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What materials, other than metal, can be used to make a really sharp knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “real sharp knife“
About Bella
If you want a classical blade to be very sharp you will want to have a very thin microstructure in order to avoid that entire microcristals get out during the sharpening process. The same thing can be applied to many materials.
It is very easy to make just any material sharp. The most important is :
* That the blade edge does not break or fold during the cutting process. Then you need something very hard.
* That the blade edge resist to abrasion during cutting. Then you need something very hard.
Any material that is at least as hard as quenched and tempered steel.
A chief knife should have around 55HRC hardness. Some high end knives have up to 65HRC hardness but starting to 60HRC it becomes hard to resharpen.
Ceramic knives are higher but are not supposed to be sharpened for a domestic use. Although these are very brittle and the blade actually ends micro-breaked in the edge aera. Then you are literally eating ceramic breaks. However there is a bunch of different ceramics so that searching on ceramics is probably the best idea for someone who wants to make a non-metallic blade.
Glass is less common but is used for some specialities. There is many types of glasses that could be used to make blades.
Carbides and Nitrides are sometime very hard. The most commonly used is Tungsten Carbide. It makes tools that cut steel. However it is very near from a metal.
Precious and semi precious stones are commonly used to make tiny specialized blades.
Some other types of stones…
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I see that one answer mentioned obsidian (volcanic glass) but there are several other types of stone that will “conchoidally fracture” and leave sharp edges. The most famous is flint.
I see that nobody mentioned plastics. “Engineering” plastics have been molded into knife shapes for decades but they’ve never been “really sharp” and the slight cutting edge they would take didn’t last.
On the other hand, aerospace-grade carbon fiber reinforced epoxy plates and tubes, manufactured under high pressure and temperature, turn out a product that rings like steel when rapped. I wondered.
I made a flat and a tubular blade out of some really excellent material and “It will kill.” The edge holding characteristic is no better than mild steel but the sharpness and stiffness make them formidable.
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Of course, many materials can be used to makes knives, or cutting edges. If by “knives” you only mean something that can be held in your hand and used in the typical way of “knives”, then this answer, which is really about “edges” doesn’t fully apply. The sharpest knives/edges are those made of flaked glass. Glass has a structure that has the possibility to create an edge one molecule wide at its narrowest. Metal blades are ground, creating finer and finer surfaces that nonetheless consist of abraded scratches. Similar to glass, though, metals can be drawn out to such fine thinness that the tip of a needle so made can be arbitrarily fine, down to one molecule if the metallurgy allows it.
As an aside, a college friend was working in the cellular biology lab, and she explained to me that the blades they used to slice up individual cells were flakes of glass so fine that they had a short, frustratingly limited useful life because the glass would soften and flow microscopically in the heat of the light used in the microscopes, necessitating the creation of new flakes pretty frequently!
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Very good question actual. If your out in the bush, it’s important that you always have a potato peeler, or a small butter knife. First things first, you get a hefty branch and start sharping the ends. Continue to peel or sharpen until sharp. But if you happen to not bring a butter knife Ect. You can use your finger nail or a rock (at the right angle) to sharpen edges.
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Some of the sharpest knives available are made of ceramic materials. They hold their edge very well, but are somewhat fragile.
Primitive people made excellent, razor sharp knives of flint for thousands of years. Obsidian was also commonly used where it was available. There are some craftsman making flint knives today. They use glass also.
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