The line you give when the gift has to matter.
KYU is the line we built for the meals you'll remember. The fortieth birthday. The wedding present. The knife your daughter will inherit.
It uses 46 folded layers of Damascus steel around an AUS10 cutting core, finished with a hammered surface that releases food cleanly. The handle pairs stabilised maple burl with 5,000-year-old bog oak, separated by a hand-fitted copper ring. Each blade carries a slightly different wave in the steel. No two are alike.
This is the knife we send when somebody asks us, "what's the one you'd give your mother."
Walk into the workshop
Sakai. The city where Japanese blades have been made for six hundred years.
Each blade takes between forty and sixty hours of work. Most of it is the slow shaping, the watching, the listening. Our Sakai blacksmith can make about three KYU blades in a week.
The materials
Damascus steel and 5,000-year-old wood.
AUS10 core, 46-layer Damascus, hammered finish
An AUS10 cutting core wrapped in 46 folded layers of softer steel, finished with a hand-set hammered (tsuchime) surface. The Damascus pattern is the visible trace of the folding process; the hammering helps the blade release food cleanly. HRC 62.
Maple burl, copper, bog oak between 3,000 and 5,000 years old
The handle is two ancient materials joined by a single copper ring. Stabilised maple burl for the grip. Bog oak — between 3,000 and 5,000 years old — for the ferrule (the kakumaki). Octagonal profile. Each handle is slightly different because each piece of burl carries its own grain.
Shop the KYU line
The complete KYU range.
from £260
Specifications
What's inside every KYU knife.
Blade
Handle & finish
A note on care
Hand wash and dry immediately. Wooden cutting boards only. Sharpen on a 1000/6000 whetstone three or four times a year. The full method lives in Knife School.
