Dear of troy: forgive my penchant for quibbling, but "volatile" refers to passing
from liquid to vapor. The problem with onions is creating aerosol, a very fine mist,
by knife compressing onion because of wedge cross section of blade. I used to
make paring knives from hacksaw blades just to get thin blade for use on fruits
and vegetable.
My mother's favorite paring knife was from ancient Civil War messkit, and many
decades of use had made it paper thin. She wept copiously when it finally broke.
A Tugboat Annie type who helped her in the kitchen brought her a long series
of knives her husband, the garbage collector, had found while he was sorting
garbage to get raw materials for fermentation into booze he sold as sideline.
My father made dozens of thin bladed paring knives, but was never able to make
one so perfect as the one that broke.