Boye Dendritic Cobalt Blades

The Boye Dendritic Cobalt (BDC) Difference:  A New Kind of Blade 

Boye Dendritic Cobalt is a super-performing, investment cast, non-rusting cobalt alloy. It excels on tough fibers like hi-tech rigging line, deck and anchor line, as well as netting.  It is completely impervious to seawater corrosion, and is non-magnetic.

Investment Cast Blades

Boye Knives are made differently than other knives. Each Boye blade starts out as a wax model, and a hard porcelain shell is built up around it. Molten Cobalt Alloy 6 is poured into the shell, melting out the wax (lost wax), and taking the shape of a blade.  As the metal cools, a dense, unified network of fully bonded, hard carbide crystals grows throughout the blade in dendritic (tree-like) patterns.  Each blade has its own one-of-a-kind carbide crystal formations, so no two blades are alike.  

Carbide Crystals and the Dendritic Cutting Effect

The cutting edge of each Boye knife has micro-serrations, tiny sawblade "teeth," produced by the alternation of the hard carbide crystals and the cobalt matrix. The fully bonded, hard carbide microstructure holds the geometry of the edge intact over time and is extremely wear resistant, both of which keep the blade sharp. They are the reason why Boye blades have such an amazing ability to cut long, deep, fast, and clean through hundreds or even thousands of cuts of tough line. Sharpening exposes fresh carbide micro-serrations ready to go to work.

 

A microscopic picture of a Boye knife blade showing dendritic carbide crystals at 200X magnification.  The white areas are the carbides, bonded to the cobalt matrix.

 

Extreme Edge Holding and No Rust

• Unbroken, fully bonded carbide crystals throughout the metallurgy with carbide teeth throughout, and along the cutting edge
• Never, ever rusts in seawater 
• Non-magnetic, does not influence a compass or other magnetic equipment, including MRI’s

Seeing is Believing

Check our cutting demo videos using notoriously tough 1/2” Endura Braid and a Boye sheepsfoot folder and Boye Basic 3 knife. In both cases, the knife was cutting just as well, and as clean, at the end of the test as at the beginning. (We ran out of rope, or we would have just kept on cutting!)  There are boat knives on the market that cannot go through this difficult-to-cut line even once.