# When cladding goes to the edge?



## Delat (Dec 27, 2021)

I’ve seen various comments implying that cladding going all the way to the edge is a bad thing. I always assumed that it implied the blade might be ground too thick at the edge to remove the cladding.

Anyway, I wanted to put aside my assumptions and hopefully get an explanation of why it’s a concern? Or is it actually a non-issue as long as the cladding doesn’t actually wrap around the edge?

Here’s my paring knife as an example - you can see the damascus touching the edge close to the heel. [I’m not concerned about this particular knife, just in general as I look at new knives].


----------



## Benuser (Dec 27, 2021)

I do not see the cladding having reached the bevels, and certainly not the edge. If that were the case, though, action is required ‐- and probably before. . The cladding steel is softer and should not be incorporated in the edge which wouldn't hold. It's indeed a sign of the area behind the edge having become too thick. The feeling while cutting gets damped due to the soft steel. Better free a lot of the hard core steel. See it as a pencil that gets sharpened by removing wood to free fresh core.


----------



## ian (Dec 27, 2021)

It’s true that it’s not a concern if it doesn’t actually touch the edge, but cladding super close to the edge makes me not confident that it’ll stay away from the edge as the knife is sharpened. 

I had a fancy knife once with a clean edge that became not clean after a couple sharpenings. Was a bit of a pain to deal with, since the cladding got close to the edge on both sides of the blade, albeit in different parts of the edge.

If it’s just an issue with the knife not being thin enough BTE (like the one in your picture) that’s easily fixed by thinning, and in that case the cladding’s probably not touching the very apex anyway, it just comes close. But you also can worry that the core steel isn’t centered correctly within the cladding, which is problematic.


----------

