Blue Steel #1 - High Carbon Steel

Blue Steel is regarded by many as one of the pinnacles of edge retention and hardness in Japanese kitchen knives. You may see them being used in high end restaurants, and their cutting power is something we believe everyone should experience at least once in their lives if they can. This blog will go into detail as to how Blue Steel #1 might be a steel for your next knife worth considering!

Blue Steel (also called Aogami) is a material created by adding chromium and tungsten to White Steel, which enhances the steel's resistance to wear and tear damage. Among the Blue Steels available, Blue Steel #1 is most well known for its high carbon content and sharp cutting edge.

It’s difficult to recommend Blue Steel #1 to first-time carbon steel knife buyers, especially if they plan on maintaining the knife themselves.

Due to its high hardness levels, a forged Blue Steel #1 kitchen knife is more resilient against wear and tear as stated earlier. However, this also includes reslience against sharpening the blade itself as sharpening involves shaving the blade down. Due to this abrasive resistance, the steel can potentially slip on whetstones during sharpening. In other words, Blue Steel #1 is a material more suited to users who already have experience and skill with using and maintaining carbon steel kitchen knives. While beginners can still use the blade, they will find maintaining it to be significantly more challenging.

When slicing sashimi with a Blue Steel #1 knife, the blade will "pull cut" through effortlessly, with an almost frightening level of smoothness.

Due to Blue Steel knives being forged thoroughly, they retain amazing strength and flexibility even with an extremely thin blade. You almost can’t feel it cutting as it slices through!

If sharpened correctly, you won’t need to apply much hand strength when cutting either, allowing you to prepare dishes with minimal strain on the ingredients and your hands. A Blue Steel #1 knife can be considered a knife that will truly take you to the next level of culinary arts.

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, Blue Steel #1 falls in this position on the graph below:

Amongst the steel knives manufactured in Japan, Blue Steel #1 falls on the higher side price-wise. It can be considered somewhat similar to White Steel #2 with a higher toughness and hardness rating. Also, it maintains its sharpness for a long time, again superior to White Steel #2.

However, this conversely makes these knives more difficult to sharpen. It’s a knife type for those who are okay with sparing no expense to whetstones and with effort to sharpening. In other words, if you don’t want to spend time sharpening and caring for your knife - this steel is perhaps not the one for you.

If you do come across a Blue Steel #1 knife that is easier to sharpen, it may have intentionally gone under a heat treatment in order to reduce its hardness.

A steel for those who enjoy sharpening and knife maintenance

Let’s compare Blue Steel #1 to other well known steel products via the table below.

Comparing to Hitachi Metal’s White Steel #2 which is the most popular knife steel for Japanese cuisine knives, we can see that Blue Steel #1 has a higher carbon content. It also has a higher tungsten and chromium content than Blue Steel #2.

These contribute to the excellent edge retention, flexibility and toughness Blue Steel #1 is known for. On the other hand, due to its very high wear resistance, while it can maintain its sharpness for a long time it also can be very challenging to sharpen. Choosing the right whetstone and demonstrating patience when you do sharpen it is required.