Coreless Steel - Stainless Steel

Coreless steel is not only rust-resistant and sharp, but also unique and innovative in terms of its appearance and manufacturing method.

As the name Coreless suggests, this steel material developed by Takefu Special Steel does not use a specific blade steel for the core material, but is made by layering two types of blade steel together - VG10 and VG2.

This approach has two major advantages, which we will go into throughout this blog.

Normally, blade steels are adopted using a single specification. However, Coreless is a material created by layering VG10 and VG2 together, two blade steels with different hardnesses and wear resistances. Despite us dealing with over 2,000 types of knives and we believe having a great deal of experience in this field, we haven't heard of such blade steel characteristics in any other knives - making this steel truly unique.

Moreover, these knives create fine serrations like a saw blade that are invisible to the naked eye, allowing them to penetrate much more easily into food.

It's said that the due to the way the blade loses its sharpness over time and the naturally forming saw-like serrations that appear from the two layered steel's differences in hardness levels when re-sharpening, that the steel retains an excellent sharpness.

Damascus steel traditionally featured layering with a soft iron to create beautiful patterns that you seem in many knives today, including our own. Even in high-quality Damascus steel though, these patterns did not extend to the blade edge, which is the actual cutting part. However, Coreless Steel, being layered throughout the blade with different steel types, allows for a beautiful layered pattern that extends all the way to the cutting edge.

This allows for some truly artistic pieces to be made - that also cut amazingly and retain their sharpness.

Steel material is crucial for indicating a knife's initial performance (amongst many other things related to craftsman ability and more). Below are some comparisons to give you some understanding showing what a particular step of the process does in terms of impacting sharpness, balance and maintainability.

There’s three key pointers in the above chart to focus on.

• Steel Material has a large impact on sharpness and maintainability (ease of sharpening and resistance to rust).

• Apart from sharpness, heat treatment and the sharpening process in knife creation also have a large impact on sharpness.

• Measuring a knife’s strengths is more than just its sharpness. Balance and maintainability also need to be considered.

Based on the above steel mapping chart, Coreless Steel falls in this position on the graph below

Cutting power as well as edge retention! Great for long-term use.

Let’s look at the tables below and explore the composition of Coreless Steel more deeply. In this instance, we've highlighted both VG2 and VG10 Steels for this comparison to showcase the differences.

As you can see, their composition and hardness differs. The Carbon content between the two steels is quite different, with VG10 almost having double the amount, but the rest of VG2 is relatively unknown to the public. Either way, the Hardness ratings are 60 and 57 respectively, so a large difference exists.

The variance in hardness contributes to the continuous formation of fine micro-serrations, providing a sustained sharpness.