Tsubame Sanjo

N.Cutlery is in Tsubame, in Niigata, and that address does most of the explaining.

Tsubame and Sanjo are two adjoining cities on the Shinano plain that have been worked as a single metalworking district for something close to four hundred years. It began in the Edo period with nails, made as off season work by farming families on land that flooded too often to rely on. Nails need a forge, a hammer and a sense of how hot steel behaves, and once a town has those three things it tends to keep finding new uses for them.

Sanjo went from nails into edged tools: chisels, planes, saws, and eventually kitchen knives. Tsubame went from hammered copper into metal tableware, and by the twentieth century was making most of Japan's forks and spoons. The two specialisms sit a few kilometres apart and have been feeding each other for generations, which is why a small company can start there in 2015 and immediately have access to forging, heat treatment, grinding and mirror polishing within a short drive.

You can see the density on our own shelf. Suwada and Shimomura are in Sanjo. Three Snow and Miyazaki Seisakusho are in Tsubame. So is N.Cutlery.

A hollow handle, and why

Most all stainless knives are made in two pieces and welded, and the weld is the weak point. Enough leverage on the handle and it is the joint that goes, not the blade.

N.Cutlery builds the blade and tang as a single monocoque structure, with a sealed hollow cavity running through the centre of the handle. Their stated reason is two things at once: it takes weight out of the handle, which moves the balance forward towards the edge where you want it, and it removes the welded joint that would otherwise be the thing that breaks.

A sealed cavity also means there is nothing to get into. No scales, no rivets, no seam between handle and blade for water or food to sit in, which is the same argument the best Japanese makers use for a fully forged one piece knife, and not one you often see from a company this size.

Demon Killer

The export line is called Onikiri, which translates as demon killer, and it comes in two builds. The plain version is the working knife. The Premium Damascus adds a patterned cladding over the core.

The steel is Ginsan, also written GIN-3 or Silver Three, a Yasuki stainless from Hitachi Metals, hardened to around 59 HRC. Ginsan is what people reach for when they want white carbon steel behaviour without the rust. It takes a very fine edge and it sharpens like a carbon blade, which most stainless stubbornly does not, and it is the reason this knife feels more expensive in the hand than it looks on the page.

What we carry

Two shapes, each in two builds.

A gyuto at 7.5 inches, the Japanese chef's knife, flatter through the belly than a German one and thinner behind the edge.

A bunka at 7 inches, which is the shape to buy if you want one knife: a reverse tanto tip that gets into detail work, a flat section for push cutting, and enough height to scoop off the board.