What is the sharpest knife in the world?

Answer 1

If one uses chef's knife for its designated purpose, i.e. vegetables, meat and other soft food, then definite winners are Japanese chef's knives. They are lighter, thinner, i.e. less exhaustion during prolonged use. Plus, Japanese kitchen knives typically are made using better and harder steel, e.g. VG-10 or better vs. X50CrMoV15 steel or worse in mainstream western kitchen cutlery. All that allows for thinner and much better cutting edges on the Japanese kitchen knives vs. wester ones.

Masamoto, Hattori, Tadatsuna, Koncuke, Togiharu, Watanabe, Takeda are some of the best known makers.

From western world Henckels and Wusthofs are perhaps the most widespread and better known. Messermeister is another German brand and their knives are slightly better and the steel they use is also slightly better thanHenckels and Wusthofs - X55CrMoV15. American company Chef's Choice produces Trizor line of kitchen knives that are very good compared to mainstream.

As for the Cutco, who's knives are distributed by Vector marketing, their claims are very far from true. 440A steel used by Cutco is the worst performer in 440 steel group(440A, 440B, 440C). It's rather old, and cheap stainless steel which is used in low end knives in knife industry, or diving knives. At any rate, it doesn't provide edge holding Cutco claims and in fact it is way behind modern Japanese knives and worse than German knives. D edge used on Cutcos is serrated edge, unfortunately its configuration makes it impossible to sharpen it at home. There is no steel that will not need sharpening for 10 years as Cutco and their marketing claim, and sending your knives to maker few times a year for sharpening is not realistic.

As for the full tang, tripple rivets and bolster, it is all marketing hype, designed to promote and sell features that nobody really needs.

Detailed explanation of the knife marketing myths in the attached link.

Answer 2

The sharpest knife has an edge one atom wide. However, it isn't a knife in conventional sense, just a specialized cutting tool for lab use, specifically to cut super thin layers of the sample material.

Out of conventional knives,kitchen knives are sharpest in general, especially traditional Japanese single grind bevel knives. Fugubiki and Usuba are perhaps the sharpest, having very thin, acute edge angles.

Answer 3

There is no one single best kitchen knife in the world. There are hundreds of different types of kitchen knives, each has its designated purpose and use. It is important to consider the desired use, operator habits, environment, maintenance costs and other factors.

Generally, there are two main schools of kitchen knives, western and Japanese. Traditionally, western knives are made out of softer steel, are thicker and tougher, while Japanese knives tend to be thinner, lighter, with much harder steel (60-67HRC on Rockwell hardness scale vs. 52-58HRC in mainstream western knives).

As far as pure cutting performance goes Japanese knives are much better performers in terms of sheer cutting performance and edge holding ability. Western knives while being worse in terms of cutting performance, and dulling faster, can tolerate a lot more abuse.

Widely acknowledged Japanese brands are Masamoto, Aritsugu, Nenohi, Hattori, Tojiro, Hiromoto, etc.

Custom kitchen knife makers like Watanabe, Takeda, Moritaka, Shigefusa are well respected and their knives highly thought after.

More popular western brands include Wusthof, Henckels, Sabatier.

Cutco knives, distributed by Vector Marketing, are made from AISI 440A type stainless steel, which is less performant in knife blades than X50CrMoV15(W-Nr 1.4116) type steel used in Wusthof and Henckel knives, which has added Vanadium to improve its wear resistance.

Several brands represent cross between Japanese and western styles, e.g. Global, Shun.

Answer 4

Wuhstof Cutlery is #1 worldwide in stores. Cutco Cutlery are by far most bought high quality cutlery in the U.S. Cutco is my preference. Cutco.com