# SK Steel, What’s the hangup?



## Alex M.S. (Jul 29, 2018)

Hi Everyone,

Just curious as to why most literature I’ve read through don’t portray SK steels in a favorable light? From my understanding SK-3 is not considered a great option, SK-5 a good option and SK-4 somewhere in the middle. 

I own a monosteel SK-4 Kikuichi petty and I can say it’s been a workhorse. It’s taken years of high usage in a professional kitchen without a single chip (fingers crossed). It is a breeze to sharpen and gets razor sharp if I need it to. It was very reactive at first but took on a dark patina pretty quickly. It’s light weight and very nimble. I’ve even had my dishwasher crush garlic with it repeatedly thinking it was a house knife and it never bent.

Is my experience with SK-4 an anomaly? I see Tsukiji, Masamoto and Susin utilizing SK steels in some lines. I’m assuming these lines are SK-4 or 5.


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## Barmoley (Jul 29, 2018)

It’s not that you can’t make a good knife out of SK steels it’s just that due to impurities making kitchen knives out of these is not the best choice. These have sulfur and phosphorus and because of that the blades have an unpleasant smell especially when cutting acidic food. These steels also tend to be very reactive, maybe also due to impurities, not sure about that. Sk3 has the most carbon and sk5 the least. These steels are used for other tools a lot, but for kitchen knives these steels are not the best choice. Given that steel cost is a relatively minor portion of the knife cost, there is really no need to use these steels unless you are making very cheap knives.


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## masibu (Jul 30, 2018)

My experience with sk steel is similar having used fujiwara and suisin carbon steel gyutos, a fujiwara sujihiki and more recently a carbon sakai takayuki petty. I feel as though it gets looked down on as an alloy as it's not as pure as other carbon steel and therefore inferior which really doesn't reflect it's performance at all. Most knives in sk4 are kept on the softer side compared to the majority of Japanese blades. It is ridiculously easy to sharpen and can handle decent levels of polish too. Touching up on an ss5k takes nothing compared to stainless. It is no more reactive (to me at least) than any other carbon steel blade and even less so than anything iron clad.

I suppose another thing to consider though is that fit and finish on sk blades tends to be lower which might influence the perception people have with it (and it appears that only western handled blades seem to be made in the case of gyutos, sujis and petty knives??). My fujiwara and sakai takayuki knives needed work on the stones straight away (the fujiwara also benefited from some thinning) but the suisin carbon was pretty much flawless in comparison. None of these knives took very long to get into shape so if you know how to sharpen properly the poor factory edges don't really matter all that much.

That aside, edge retention isn't the greatest (which to be honest doesn't mean very much to me anyway) so touchups will generally be required more frequently. Since it's so quick to do though it doesn't even matter plus it tends to feel pretty good on the stones to me so I enjoy it more than I would with stainless for instance.

In summary...I like sk steel quite a lot. Its tough as guts, can be sharpened at acute angles and handles a range of grits easily. If price is no issue then maybe you would overlook it for something higher end. Its not fashionable like blue or white steel but from a workhorse perspective it's brilliant and tends to be reasonably cheap for the performance you get out of it.


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## Benuser (Jul 30, 2018)

Just in addition to Masibu's observations: the recent Fujiwara FKH I've seen were less reactive than previous ones. Must have to do with tolerances in steel composition.
The steel isn't the finest grained. You may like that, or not. It delivers a lot of bite, and is, indeed, very easy to sharpen. 
Can't say I got the impression it's softer than Misono's Swedish, which hardness is probably overestimated, while the FKH's is underestimated for obvious reasons.


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## Larrin (Jul 30, 2018)

I have no idea what level of impurities it would take for the steel to smell different but it has to be way more than what is in the SK steels.


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## Benuser (Jul 30, 2018)

It's a bit more of sulfur than tolerated in other steels. Once a patina has installed it smells like any other carbon steel, to me at least.


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## masibu (Jul 30, 2018)

Yep.. it seems to me that claims about the stink of sk steel are pretty exaggerated. It's no better or worse than any other carbon steel in my experience. I would happily use sk4 for a pro environment (so long as it's carbon friendly). It's a good entry level for people looking to try out a carbon steel knife without investing huge amounts of dollars. If you cant care for sk4 you won't like anything else carbon either.


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## Larrin (Jul 30, 2018)

Also the sulfur is present as manganese sulfides not as "gas bubbles" waiting to escape from the steel.


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## Barmoley (Jul 30, 2018)

Could be a coincidence. I've only tried 4 different SK4 knives, each one was very reactive until patina set in and less reactive after. Each discolored food before patina and still some food after. Chipping was never an issue and knives were durable, easy to sharpen, 2 of the knives were kikuichi and the other 2 some other Japanese brand. Since these steels are used for cheaper kitchen knives in general, maybe something else is going on. All of these knives had unpleasant odor to them, the only ones that smelled as bad were a few carbon Chinese knives I've tried and one knife that was made out of an old scythe, don't know what steel that was.


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## Alex M.S. (Jul 30, 2018)

masibu said:


> In summary...I like sk steel quite a lot. Its tough as guts, can be sharpened at acute angles and handles a range of grits easily. If price is no issue then maybe you would overlook it for something higher end. Its not fashionable like blue or white steel but from a workhorse perspective it's brilliant and tends to be reasonably cheap for the performance you get out of it.



Agreed. The $70 I spent on my Kikuichi petty has given me 10x the return in usage easily, and it’s still kicking.


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## Benuser (Jul 30, 2018)

Sold a few nicer 270's I had no longer much use for, and bought a FKH 270 instead. Good stuff, and F&F has improved a lot over the years.


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## masibu (Jul 30, 2018)

I have "nicer" sujis too but the fujiwara still holds a slot from time to time. I think I prefer the western handle for a suji as well which is a bonus.


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## Benuser (Jul 31, 2018)

Their 270 suji is remarkably stiff, which I like. And the bite the steel provides matches greatly with working with meat.


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## masibu (Jul 31, 2018)

It's a pretty good middleground for stiffness. Less flex than my white 2 yusuke but more than my itonomonn and watanabe sujis. They were much more expensive though..you could buy multiple fujiwaras for the same price. The fujjwara is tougher and holds an aggressive edge quite well as you said. Its not the end of the world if you happen to hit bone or whatever accidentally. I find it pretty good for slicing bread (provided the crust isn't uber hard) and random portioning jobs. I'm guessing it has something tondo with the narrower blade having less drag and resistance when cutting soft items or something (compared to a gyuto). 

That has me wondering.. does a carbon bread knife have much merit? I've yet to come across one. Most of them are in softer stainless (aus8 or german etc) and the occasional vg10 or sg2. Its probably an edge retention thing I assume. I rarely use bread knives let alone sharpen them. I imagine that would be a fairly tedious process that you wouldn't want to do frequently


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