The secret of sharpening. –Why Japanese knives are easy to sharpen?

I explained that Japanese knives are made of hard steel and soft iron by forge welding. Forge welding techniques give an advantage to Japanese knives. It is the ease of sharpening.

However solid and sharp a knife is, it must become dull. Sharpening is very important work in all countries.


Hard steel knives are too hard to be sharpened by hand. If a knife gets harder, it becomes hard to be sharpened. Or, when it is easy to be sharpened, it will be soft. Because Western knives must be soft to be sharpened, they become dull sooner than Japanese knives.

So, how about sharpening Japanese knives? –That is the situation in which an edge made of hard steel and soft iron shows its advantage.

Soft iron covers hard steel. When a Japanese knife is sharpened, soft iron and hard steel are sharpened together. Even if steel is very hard, soft iron helps a lot to be sharpened.

The fame of Japanese knives has certain reasons. They are the advantages of forge welding which I explained.

I will talk about “steel” which is an important material of knives in the next article.

(Written by Iida Tool )

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