Kyocera Advanced Ceramic Revolution Series 7-inch Professional Chef’s Knife, Black Handle, White Blade

If you like lightweight knives, Kyocera ceramic knives are lighter and better handling than any steel knife out there. The edge will last a good long time, if you do not abuse it. Ceramic knives are more fragile than metal knives and will not take well to hitting bone. Sharpening requires $10 and shipping to the Kyocera plant in California, OR purchasing the Kyocera electric ceramic knife sharpener ( Kyocera Electric Diamond Knife Sharpener for Ceramic Knives ), OR getting into knife sharpening with a set of diamond abrasives. For most people, factory sharpening is probably the easiest route, and turnaround time is a usually a week or two.There are a lot of reviews extolling the sharpness of this knife. I’m not entirely sure what to make of those. My theory is, most people who do not sharpen their own knives, or send them out periodically to be sharpened, rarely encounter a truly sharp knife. It does not actually take a very sharp blade to prepare most food, so this isn’t generally an insurmountable problem. When new, the edge on this Kyocera is certainly serviceable, and remains good for many months, so compared to the great mass of dull knives out there these will seem like a vast improvement. The electric sharpener will restore an edge adequately, perhaps to a smidge less finer degree than a factory resharpening. My best results have been with a sharpening system using diamond polish tapes, and even that does not approach the sharpness of a recently sharpened steel knife. It is possible to sharpen these yourself, with the right investment in the proper abrasives, using the proper techniques and a significant amount of time, to a hair shaving edge, but that is a result that is most remarkable for its rarity.That being said, if you are not a sharpening nut, this knife will usually be the sharpest one you have. Use it for rindless vegetables and boneless meats only; it will never replace your steel knives for all purposes.

While this Kyocera ceramic knife can be used for cutting meat (but no bones!), I purchased it primarily for using on veggies.So far, it’s been a delight for chopping and thinly slicing vegetables. Even soft tomatoes will slice right through without the slightest bit of squooshing. And unlike steel-bladed knives, ceramic knives won’t cause cut lettuce edges to brown or develop “rust.”I’m used to having sharp knives; but I have to say that this is probably one of my sharpest right now. In fact, I cut my finger fairly badly within my first few uses. I find it to be a problem with this and other ceramic knives in that they don’t seem to have the slightly blunted finger guard between the handle and the heel (back edge) of the blade. I just wanted to mention this because you may need to relook at how you hold your knife for routine cutting because of this design.One thing that sort of bugs me about the knife is its light weight; but that’s probably because I’m used to working with weightier high-quality steel knives. In particular, the handle seems to be nearly weightless which initially felt odd to me. I’m readjusting my view to not associate light weight with flimsiness…because this Kyocera knife definitely seems to be of high quality.My knife hasn’t required sharpening yet. While Kyocera does offer an Electric Diamond Knife Sharpener for Ceramic Knives for sale on Amazon, it is too expensive for me to buy for sharpening my one Kyocera knife. I have a second ceramic knife; but my understanding is that this sharpener only works specifically with the Kyocera brand knives. Instead, I will likely just send it back to the company for sharpening as is recommended.As with my other non-ceramic knives, I never put them in the dishwasher. I’m particularly careful to not drop this knife or use it for prying (and really, that’s a knife no-no anyway, right?).

Background; I’ve been using ceramic knives since 2008, when I got my Kyocera Revolution Set in July. That was a “revolution” not just in ceramic knives, since they had been around for a while, but in quality and price. I never really cared for the handles on the revolution series though, but I liked the knives enough that I watched for sales in the Classic, LTD, and Kyotop series from Kyocera which feature nicer handles. I also picked up a nice Victorinox Ceramic with a large Fiberox handle. At this point all my average utility-knife tasks (less than 6″) had almost always been done with a ceramic knife. I’ve not had any real issues will them, I have a 1mm chip out of the tip of my 5.5″ Kyotop which had a nice pointy tip, and my Victorinox knife has micro chips in the edge and needs a sharpening at this point. My other Kyocera knives are in good shape. I’ve sharpened my Revolution paring knife once on the Kyocera sharpener, but had since have moved back to using steel paring knives mostly for real paring tasks, with occasional use of the ceramic. The Classic version of the paring knife has a nice tip and blade, but overall I prefer my steel paring knives for many tasks beyond peeling and straight cuts.The Knife: I was not looking to buy another ceramic knife (I’m set with 4 in the block), but when I saw this new 8″ Chef’s knife…and a nice sale price… well I just had to try it to see if there was really any change that allowed them to make the bigger sized knife… and this is a pretty big knife. Essentially a full sized Chef’s knife that’s ideal for many home cooking environments (although many chef’s prefer a 10″ knife). I really wish they would have upgraded the handle material on this one. There does not seem to be any material change in the ceramic just a bigger knife (I got the white blade one as black was not available at the time but is preferred for stain resistance).Blade Length: 20.3mm / 8″Overall Length: 32.5mmBlade Height: 55mm (at the heal/back)Blade Width: 1.8mm at heal and tapers towards tip.Weight: 109gEdge Geometry: 70/30? (not sure but not 50/50)The nice height gives lots of hand clearance between the cutting board, but unfortunately this means the knife does not fit correctly in the Kyocera Bamboo 3 knife block. The blade geometry is a typical traditional German Chef’s knife profile with a large belly, I would prefer a flatter French profile.The cut tests were no surprises… it’s sharp… it seems really good at slicing Christmas Nougat (watch for nuts), it performed better than the steel knives I tried. On other basic chef’s knife tasks it performed very well, but since my steel knives have been recently upgraded also I can’t say it performed better than them for general use, and in most cases the steel knives did perform more to my liking. Now the knives it was up against cost 0.8 – 4 times the price I paid for this one ($67), so in some ways for the money it really performed. The steel knives can be expected to have a longer life probably as they are less prone to breakage (though I’ve never broke a ceramic knife as I use them appropriately), but they need better care in cleaning any washing than the ceramic knives. Still a Chef’s knife is suppose to do it all, and I think the steel knives are more flexible (literally and figuratively).I currently have two other 10″ chef’s knives in the block, a 7″ Santoku, and a new 8″ Kiritsuke with a very thin blade so this knife was just a bit redundant for me, but it was really nice to try alongside my other knives with all the different holiday cutting chores. For me though the ceramic knives really work best in the 4-6″ range and I’m still trying a ceramic Nakiri just for fun. Knives in this range are often used with vegetables where the not reactive qualities of the of ceramic are great, and the incredibly long lasting edge is amazing. My favorite ceramic knife is the 5.5″ Kyotop (KT-140), they call it a Santoku, but it’s not very tall and it’s short so I think of it more as a utility/sandwich knife (it goes on super sale sometimes). I uploaded a picture of the knife with some other ceramic knives for a size comparison (picture gone now sorry).A great knife, at a good price. Low maintenance, but be careful to follow the usage and care instructions to avoid breakage.

The blade height is low, but after using it for some time, it feels like an extension of your finger like a wolverine. I have bigger hands and thought the grip might have too small of a diameter and my hand would overlap, but turns out to be comfortable.

This knife is like a surgical tool. Only down side is you need to be very careful as it will take your fingertip off if you’re not! Extremely sharp and great hand feel. This is the 4th one I’ve bought over the years and keep a spare in the drawer too.