What we carry in VG-10
VG-10 is a Japanese stainless from Takefu Special Steel, published at 60 to 62 HRC and best known in kitchen cutlery. It holds a keen edge for a long time and resists rust well, but that hardness costs a little toughness at the top of the range, so it would rather chip than roll. Every VG-10 knife on this shelf is a Böker Plus folder.
| Type | stainless |
|---|---|
| Made by | Takefu Special Steel (Japan) |
| Composition | C ~1.0%Cr ~15%Mo ~1.0%V ~0.2%Co ~1.5% |
| Hardness | 60-62 HRC |
| Edge retention | Very good, a long-standing benchmark premium Japanese stainless, especially in kitchen cutlery. |
| Toughness | Good, though can be a bit more brittle than tougher modern stainless at the high end of its HRC range. |
| Corrosion resistance | Very good. |
| Where it sits | Upper-mid to premium tier; iconic in Japanese kitchen knives, also used in Western folders. |
| On this site right now | 11 listings covering 8 distinct models, $98.96 to $242.10. Brands: Böker Plus (11). |
Takefu Special Steel in Japan makes VG-10, and the alloy has been on the market long enough that most buyers have heard the name before they ever read a composition chart. The chart above gives you the recipe. What a recipe cannot tell you is how a blade behaves, because the same alloy leaves two factories acting differently depending on heat treat and on how thin the edge was ground.
The short read on the composition: the carbon is what lets the steel get hard and stay hard, the chromium is what keeps it from staining, and the molybdenum, vanadium and cobalt alongside them round out a stainless that made its name on fine cutting rather than heavy work.
VG-10 became a benchmark in Japanese kitchen cutlery, and that history matters more than it sounds, because a kitchen is an easy place to be a hard steel. A knife on a board meets softwood, vegetables and a wiped-down towel. The load runs straight down through the edge, there is almost no twisting, and the worst thing that happens on a normal day is a rinse somebody forgot to dry.
Those are the conditions where a hard, keen edge pays for itself. Hardness is resistance to being pushed out of shape, so a thin apex stays thin through a long prep session instead of squashing flat. Rust resistance covers the other half of kitchen life: acidic food, running water, and a room where something is usually steaming.
A folder does not live that life. The same steel in your pocket meets cardboard with grit in it, packing bands, zip ties, the occasional staple, and a driveway when the knife slips out of your hand. Those are impacts and side loads, and side loads are what a very hard edge likes least.
This is the honest caveat on the alloy and the reason the table above hedges on toughness. Worked at the upper end of its published hardness, VG-10 trades away a little of the toughness that the newer, tougher stainless steels keep. In practice that is a failure mode rather than a weakness: instead of rolling over when it meets something it cannot push through, the edge can surrender a small piece. A rolled edge you can often bring back in a few passes. A chip you have to grind out.
None of that makes it fragile. It makes it a cutting steel. Cut with it, leave prying to a pry bar, and the hardness that reads as a risk on paper is what keeps the edge working long after a softer stainless has quit.
Here is the gap worth knowing about before you shop. There is not a single kitchen knife among the VG-10 listings in this warehouse. All 11 live listings are Böker Plus folders across 8 distinct models. They start at $98.96 for the Petite Urban Trapper Lockback with a 2.75 inch blade, and top out at the Urban Trapper Gentleman, a 3.75 inch drop point with a cocobolo handle. The middle of the shelf sits at $134.96.
That is a coherent group rather than a random one. They are small folders, linerlocks and lockbacks, blades from 2.75 to 3.75 inches, handles in cocobolo, G10, carbon fiber and titanium. Fine cutting is what this steel is good at, so the pattern tracks. One more thing the listings make plain: the alloy is Japanese, the knives are not. These Böker Plus models give China as the country of origin.
Three comparisons come up constantly, and all three go better with the pages side by side than from memory.
The rest of the rack, sorted by what the blade is actually made of, is in the Steel Lab.
Rust resistance this good means the blade asks very little of you. A wet hand, a damp pocket or a rinse under the tap is not a crisis, and you are not likely to find orange spots the next morning. Water still collects where air does not reach, so dry the pivot and under the clip, not just the flats you can see.
Sharpening is where the hardness turns up again. It takes longer to bring back than a softer stainless would, and light pressure and a consistent angle matter more than the stone you use. If a folder of yours chips more often than it dulls, carry the edge angle up slightly at the next sharpening and put a little more steel behind the apex.
Entry-tier vs premium Japanese stainless, a common 'why does this knife cost 3x more' comparison.
Classic Japanese premium stainless vs classic American CPM premium stainless, long-running community debate.
American value stainless vs premium Japanese stainless, a common outdoor and hunting-knife buyer comparison.
Böker Plus builds modern folders in both: a semi-stainless tool steel against VG-10, the Japanese premium stainless from Takefu Special Steel.
The figures on this page are the published specification ranges for the alloy, cross-checked against manufacturer datasheets and independent metallurgical references. They describe the steel, not any one knife. Hardness in particular is a range a mill and a knifemaker work inside, and Knives Now does not test the heat treat of individual knives, so nothing here is a claim about what a specific listing measures.
Cross-checked against the sources above. Figures verified 2026-07-19.