Ceramic blade sharpening: is it worth it?
Firstly, it’s worth reiterating that, yes, ceramic blades can be sharpened.
As ceramic is harder than steel – hence ceramic being used to sharpen steel blades – it’s a little more complicated and requires a different set of tools. Diamond – as one of the few materials harder than ceramic – is generally used to sharpen ceramic blades.
The actual question, is it worth it, is a bit more complicated.
New vs old
Ceramic blades can be bought fairly cheaply, but – largely due to the materials involved and the difficulty in avoiding chipping the blade – sharpening is actually relatively expensive.
Of course ceramic sharpening costs vary depending on where you are and a little bit of time on Google might show up some decent prices. Be cautious, however, often cheap ceramic and steel sharpening services are cheap for a very good reason…
We approached a number of sharpening services and the prices, while a whisker cheaper than a new ceramic blade for steel sharpening, were often more expensive when it came to ceramic blade sharpening.
So, in summary, it’s probably not worth sending your ceramic clipper blade off to be sharpened and we appreciate that as a retailer of ceramic blades, you’d expect us to say that. However, a new blade is always going to be more effective than a sharpened one. The more material you remove from a blade’s teeth, the less effective it will be in the long run and, clearly, there’s a finite number of times you can sharpen a blade before it becomes ineffective.
So, in summary, ceramic blades can be sharpened. The issues are that ceramic sharpening services are much less common than steel ones and the process makes it comparatively expensive. By all means send your blades off to be serviced and sharpened, but don’t blame us if you’re out of pocket…
