Originally Posted by
David Weaver
The ceramic is much harder than an arkansas stone. If you can believe that. The abrasive in it is probably some sort of ceramic alumina, and the entire thing may be abrasive for all I know (meaning that the stone and binder are generally one material and edges of voids do the cutting and determine the fineness of the stone. This is essentially the same thing for novaculite, except the novaculite particles aren't as hard and durable as ceramic alumina.
Obvious other issue is that if you don't use the spydercos dry, you use water instead of oil. The medium is hard to water, though - it's like very fine coral and the water just disappears.
Since the alumina is harder than novaculite, it stays sharp and cuts carbides that novaculite doesn't.
There is probably some easy reading somewhere to find out exactly what the ceramic bits and pieces are made of. We use the term aluminum oxide loosely, but there are scads of different abrasive aluminas that have different levels of durability and slightly different levels of hardness. Ceramics, etc, have a lot of usefulness in manufacturing, especially in heavy industry, and as woodworkers, we're more or less siphoning off stuff that we can use. We don't care so much about the durability of the alumina as a manufacturing environment might where the item is a wear part.
I have no idea what coors uses the ceramics for, but I'd imagine the reason that they had a ceramic division was to supply their beer making. You can find coors ceramic hones out there, but no guarantees on what they actually are since I'm sure spyderco had a spec and worked with them to get what they wanted.
Anyway, the real difference between them and novaculite is that they can cut carbides and novaculite generally can't.