VG-1 Steel - Stainless Steel

VG-1 (also known as V1/V-Gold #1) is a material with the hardness of steel, but with rust-resistant characteristics. It is a reliable steel material that has many fans even today when VG10 and Powdered High-Speed Steel are popular.

About 30 to 40 years ago, stainless steel knives were mostly made of steel with a carbon content of about 0.6%, such as AUS-6 steel and 420-J2.

Since the carbon content and hardness are almost proportional, the sharpness was inevitably inferior to that of SK material (0.9-1% carbon content) and White Steel #2 (1.05-1.15%), which had been used since those times.

However, stainless steel is attractive because it does not require care to prevent rust.

Knowing this, our store manager at that time (who is still the manager today) called on various factories 40 years ago and launched our G-Line series (VG-1 Steel, 0.95-1.05% carbon content).

When the first factory that was approached to produce these knives began production, our first batch of nearly 1,000 knives made was too hard and all the knives broke.

However, after reviewing the entire process of hardening, distortion removal, and blade setting, the G-Line series using VG-1 Steel was finally completed and was well accepted by customers at the time, and has become a long-selling kitchen knife that is still loved by customers today in the current era, decades later.

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, VG-1 Steel falls in this position on the graph below

All the things you want in a knife at an inexpensive price!

Let’s look at the tables below and explore the composition of VG-1 Steel more deeply.

The Hardness Rockwell Counter measures at 60, which is relatively high amongst stainless steels - meaning this is a harder steel (and thus potentially a sharper one.) The added large amounts of Molybdenum give this steel higher levels of tenacity and wear resistance. You can see this steel even has more Molybdenum steel in it than AUS8 which is often referred to as "Molybdenum Steel."

Furthermore, VG-1 has the property of tending to slip on whetstones. Those who are used to carbon steels such as White Steel #2 may feel that VG-1 is quite slippery when sharpening. The "feel" of sharpening varies from person to person however, and also variances may depend on the knife making process and the kind of whetstones being used.