What is Rockwell hardness (AKA HRC)?

All our knives are rated for how hard they are with what is called the Rockwell rating or measurement (known as the HRC scale for knives) of the steel.

HRC is clever in its simplicity, it simply measures how much of a dent/mark a diamond point can make in the metal with a measured amount of weight. The smaller the mark the harder the steel.

The higher the rating the harder the material so the thinner/finer the cutting edge can be which is why you see higher ratings on our knives as they are built to be sharper and importantly - retain that sharpness for much longer than softer steels.

Most Japanese chef knives are at least 60HRC with some reaching as high as 67-68 which is very hard and requires some care and attention with your cutting technique. A lot of knives are typically in the sweet spot around 61-63HRC which offers a good balance between edge retention and durability and you'll find stainless steels like SG2, Ginsan (Silver 3), VG1 & VG10 and Aogami Blue and Shirogami White carbon steels among others generally fit into this hardness bracket.

Depending on the steel and the skill of the blacksmith, significantly higher levels of hardness can be achieved with steels like Super Blue, HAP40, ZDP189 (64-66HRC is common in Super Blue steel knives for example).

The tradeoff as you might imagine is that the harder the steel is, the more brittle it may potentially be and it can take longer to sharpen but you will have to do it less often.

"How hard are Global knives?"

This is a common question we get given Global are marketed so widely as a premium knife and have a brand many people recognise. 

While they're fairly sharp out of the box, their HRC rating is somewhere between 56 and 58HRC so they're not really in the same league as knives above the 60 HRC mark and you'll find that sharpness with Global soon disappears and you end up with a knife that requires a lot more maintenence to keep an edge and perform adequately.

They're also still a fairly premium price when you buy a set so you might want to reconsider and we hope you'll agree with us when we answer the other common question "are Japanese knives worth it?"