Carbon or Stainless Steel? A Buyers Guide For Japanese Knives

I think we got it, that was the best one, okay, we've got it nailed, Ben from Chef's Edge, here we are back, today we're going to talk about

carbon

steel

and

stainless

steel

blades and which one might be best for you. Japanese

knives

will be divided into two main categories:

carbon

steel and

stainless

steel. Now there are some gray areas in and around that I'll explain later, but for the most part, those are the two main knife steels we're going to use. that we're talking about today, now let's cover the most interesting ones first, we're going to put away the stainless steel knife and we're going to go straight to the carbon steel.

When we talk about a carbon steel knife, we're talking about a steel that has about one to two percent carbon by total weight and generally lacks the properties of stainless steel, in comparison, when you walk around home goods stores and you see Japanese

knives

, I'm not going to name any names that they often have out there. 0.3 carbon, a traditional carbon steel like blue 2 will have between 1 and 1.2 percent carbon, almost four times the amount, which makes a huge difference when talking about how hard the steel is and how long The knife will remain sharp. Now, a higher carbon content allows the blacksmith to push that steel to a much higher hardness and that will result in a much more durable edge compared to knives available on the market.

Now, with too much hardness, your knife will become brittle and have a lower hardness. Your knife will dull very, very quickly and carbon is the special source that makes this happen as you will probably find that there is a trade-off when it comes to the hardness of the knife and we will explain more about that a little bit. A little later, before I get carried away with knife steel, let's get into the most common Japanese carbon steels. You will find that the two most common carbon steels used in Japanese knives are aogami and shurigami. aogami and shurigami both translate directly to blue paper and white paper now get those names because of the color packaging they arrive from the factory blue paper for steel blue paper and you guessed it white paper for steel white paper so let's put the aegami away first and quickly let's just talk about the shiragami, this shurigami is from hardo knife in sakai.

I'm sure I'll talk about this later in another video. Shiragami There are a couple different variations of shirogami, there is one white, one white two and one white three, but for now I'm just going to talk about white steel as a whole. White steel is a very, very pure carbon steel. It's probably the easiest to rust, but it's also the easiest to sharpen for those of you who have used a shiragami knife before. I got a very unpleasant surprise after leaving it wet on the cutting board. Yes, there is a reason they don't have stainless steel properties at all if you are thinking of using a carbon steel knife and want something very, very easy to sharpen. a white steel knife might be so keep in mind that if you leave them wet on the cutting board they will rust pretty quickly and believe me it's not pleasant, it's happened to me a couple of times, just a couple and quickly.

When we talk about carbon steel knives, I'm just going to add the hrc, which is the Rockwell hardness scale. Now you will find that many viable knife steels fall between 55 and 65, which is the generally viable range. speaking, white steels sometimes sit between 62 and 63, obviously there are a couple of variations with them, but around 62 ish on the hardness scale, which is still a very hard knife, still very easy to sharpen and only with white steel knives remember to oil them after use. to prevent the surface from rusting and we have had a few cases of people placing their knives on the magnetic rack and right on top of the kettle when they turn on the kettle obviously steam comes out.

Water settling on your carbon steel knife is not a good thing, if it's not oiled it's actually not good at all to be honest, but keep in mind to stay away from sources of moisture, oil your blade afterward. of use and should generally be fine, so shiragami made aragami, probably the most common carbon steel you. You will find on Japanese knives that it is a little less prone to rust than white steel. It has a little bit of rust resistance, but again not much. It will still rust if you leave it wet on the cutting board.

Blue steel is generally easy to work with if you are a blacksmith, so you will find that many of the carbon steel knives in Japan will be made from a variant of blue carbon steel. It's also not an overly expensive carbon steel, so not being overly expensive, it's pretty easy to work with. You will find that many Japanese knives are made with blue carbon steel. It also has very, very good robustness. Very good edge retention. It is still very easy to sharpen if the steel has been properly heat treated. Generally speaking, the carbon steel Bluetooth will be a fantastic option. for your first carbon steel knife, if you don't mind that little extra maintenance, the hardness for the blue steels obviously has blue one and a blue two, I don't think there is a blue three, the workable hardness for those is around 61 up. to 64 depending on the variant, so you have blue one, blue two and there is also blue super steel.

The super steel blue is basically an upgraded version of bluetooth. You will find that it is a little harder to sharpen and has even more carbon than the bluetooth. but it also has very good edge retention. You'll find that despite that very good edge retention, it can still develop a bit of surface rust if you're not careful. Super blue, when heat treated properly, is one of the best knife steels. that you can use now when we were talking about carbon steel knives, we can't forget to mention the patina. Patina is oxidation on the exterior of steel.

Your nice, shiny, perfect looking new knife will basically never look like that again now, that's because these knives lack. Any or very few properties of stainless steel, such as a carbon steel case, these knives will develop a patina over time which is basically a bluish-purple reddish tint over the blade and you will notice that the blue-purple reddish tone will gradually darken and fade. It darkens and basically turns gray or black over time, the patina is a good thing, this just means that your knife is forming that protective layer on the outside of the steel and that will actually make it less prone to rusting later.

I'm going to quickly digress from carbon and stainless steels. You'll notice that sand shows up a lot, almost all knives are made with Sandmar which is basically a three-ply construction. We'll have to see if I can focus it there if so. It's not like that and you can only see my face I'm so sorry you will have three layers your three layers are the steel core here this steel core in most cases will go from there to the spine, then you will see the fog layer here and the flat part on the top which is a layer of steel here this is a layer of steel here on the edge and on the back it is exactly the same if you look down the blade this way you have a layer of soft iron on the side , usually for carbon steel knives, a layer of soft iron here and then the straight edge towards the middle, the moritaker is also made with sand lead, it has a layer of soft iron on the outside here and then it also has the core bright. steel, which is the bluetooth carbon edge, now this knife here from hardo because we don't have a section here called karachi finish, the raw scale of forged blades like this that don't have a karachi finish will obviously be more reactive to what along the entire blade, whereas the more objective there is here, you'll actually have a little bit of protection over here, although this layer is soft iron, you'll notice that it will actually be quite difficult to rust in the early stages, over time, This black will fade now.

Probably my favorite variation of the sand, my construction is the combination of carbon and stainless steel. Now we have stainless steel on the outside and you guessed it, carbon steel on the cutting edge. This is the stainless steel clad Bluetooth option from Matsubara. You'll notice that having a stainless steel clad steel is a blessing for maintenance, so you really only have to worry about keeping the steel core dry. Give it a very light coat of oil if you want to be very careful, but you'll notice that this here is not reactive. only its carbon cutting steel core will patina and rust over time, plus it also looks pretty awesome having all stainless steel on the side and a nice black set with patina on the cutting edge once you fill that patina for years and years of use, so If you want to use a carbon steel blade, this blue coating two stainless steel is a great option to start deviating now, let's get into the stainless steels.

The two most common Japanese stainless steels you will find are vg10 and ginseng or ginseng, whichever is your choice. I want to call it quickly just cover vg10 now this is a vg10 bunker from suncraft now vg-10 as a stainless steel is a very good option if you are just starting out with about one percent carbon making it a high content stainless steel carbon. lots of chrome some extra elements added for extra hardness now these knives are generally considered very good beginner knives vg-10 they are not as cheap as they used to be when heat treated properly can be very easy to sharpen has excellent edge retention corrosion resistance Hardness This is generally a really good steel all around, so you will find it on many Japanese knives VG10 on the hardness scale usually falls between 60 and 61, very close to carbon steel, but now it is no other.

The highly underrated Japanese stainless steel is ginseng. Now ginseng is a high carbon stainless steel. It's just over one percent carbon, so it's a little higher than vg10, but it sharpens very, very easily, almost similar to white carbon steel. It is as pure a stainless steel as you will find. that ginseng is between 60 and 61 on the hardness scale and is also similar to carbon, but not completely, now ginseng contains around 14 chromium, which makes it a stainless steel, but with that high content of carbon you have something that behaves like a carbon steel in terms of edge retention in terms of overall sharpness durability how long it will stay sharp, but it also has the added benefit of being a stainless steel blade, so if you see a ginseng at good price, highly Highly underrated steel is also not as common as vg10 and personally one of my favorite stainless steels, now there is another fairly commonly used stainless steel, it is oz 8 or oz10, except I forgot to bring my oz knives 8 oz 10 today yes, pretty silly.

I know, so you'll have to imagine an eight ounce knife here that looks like the fkm on my website. I'll also put a link to that in the description oz 8 oz 10 are generally a little softer, they are more considered the commercial workhorse of kitchen knives, around 58 to 59 on the hardness scale, good stainless steel, very easy to sharpen, great if you are just getting started with

japanese

knives and need a beginner level knife, the fkm series is a great place to go. To start, I mentioned earlier that there was a gray area around carbon steels and stainless steels.

Now we have a couple of options that are semi-stainless, like skd, which you'll find, for example, in yoshikari, for example, very, very fine grain semi-stainless steel, excellent edge retention. Really, very easy to sharpen. It has certain resistance to corrosion. It's not a fully stainless blade, but they are semi-stainless, so you'll find they're pretty forgiving if you leave them wet, they won't rust immediately like charcoal. steel blade, but skd seems like a great combination between some stainless steel properties and some carbon ones to me. Now, moving on to perhaps one of my favorites, is what is called powdered stainless steel.

Powdered stainless steels are a high carbon stainless steel so you get all the benefits of carbon with all the benefits of stainless steel now the downside to them being so awesome is that they get a little brittle because these knives are very, very hard. You will find that many of these are ground very, very fine on the edge when you cut them. you have a very thin, very hard steel knife that will become more brittle if you apply all your force to the seed pits, something like that generally the rule of thumb is if you don't chew it, don't cut it, but if you cut it you probably it will chip your knife, probably one of the most used powdered stainless steels in Japanese knife making and probably my favorite steel overall is r2 or sg2.

This is a very high carbon stainless steel, it's about 1.4 percent carbon, so again almost 40. percent more carbon than vg10 and anyof the other carbon steels very very hard steel for making knives these generally fall between 63 and 65 on the hardness scale with an r2 sg2 knife you will find that you basically get all the benefits of carbon steel uh with all The benefits of having a stainless steel blade and the good value for money. Takamura's sg2 is one of the best you can get right now. There are a couple of other powdered stainless steels that I don't have with me today.

There is Hat 40, which is very, very. Hard powder stainless steel usually seen around hrc65 hap40 is very difficult to sharpen. You'll need to start with a lower grit, like a 400 grit, just to get the bur moving and refining that apex on your edge. 40 is generally not recommended for your first knife and then you also have basically the king of knife steels, which is the zdp-189. Now this is a very, very hard knife making steel, it's over two percent carbon, which is crazy, plus it's very corrosion resistant. The blade can reach between 65 and 67 hrc which is just crazy, these knives will stay sharp for a long time at the cost of obviously being more brittle and quite a hassle to sharpen, so to sum all that up, if you want to go for a knife Carbon steel is generally the most common and cost-effective.

You will find that it will be a bluetooth carbon steel, easy to sharpen, not too reactive, get one with a Karachi finish so it is not too difficult to keep it dry and you should be fine, and as for VG10 or ginseng stainless steels, they will be excellent performers for your Personally, the first knife I would lean towards ginseng just because it is much easier to sharpen. I find them easier to sharpen personally and you will often find them at a very good price too and if you wanted something a little special takamura sg2 powder stainless steel. won't break the bench very easy to sharpen very good edge retention but you just have to be careful not to cut anything too hard no bones no seeds no frozen stuff and that's it hope you learned something today if you have any questions , comment Leave them below and tell us what kind of videos you want us to make next.

I'll see you next time.