Blade coating
Also called non-stick coating, titanium nitride
A titanium-nitride or non-stick layer on a blade that fights corrosion and helps fillets release instead of sticking.
Fish flesh is wet and sticky and it clings to bare steel, which slows you down and tears the fillet. A coated blade sheds it, which matters most when you are cleaning a limit of panfish and doing the same cut fifty times.
The coating also puts a barrier between the steel and the water, so a coated blade tolerates neglect better than a bare one.
It wears at the edge, because you sharpen there. That is fine and expected; the coating on the flats is doing the non-stick work.
Titanium nitride is the common one and gives the gold finish you see on a lot of fishing knives. Black coatings are usually a similar nitride or a polymer, and both are cosmetic as much as functional.
Do not confuse a coating with the steel underneath. A cheap blade with a good coating is still a cheap blade, and it will dull at the same rate a bare one would.
Sharpen only one side of a coated blade if the manufacturer says so. Grinding both bevels strips the coating faster than necessary.
Related terms
Where this comes up
The guides that use blade coating and show it on real gear.
Blade coating is one of 206 terms in the glossary.
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