Every few years Sukenari works a steel nobody else has bothered with. ZDP-189, HAP40, SRS-13, YXR7, and now ZDP-247. It is not a new alloy. It comes from the same Hitachi (now Proterial) ZDP family as ZDP-189. Murray Carter was working a ZDP-247 variant back in the early 2000s, and described it as a steel made for forging rather than grinding from a blank. The steel came out of Hitachi about thirty years ago, and Sanyo Riki, the mill that laminates Sukenari's billets, says roughly a ton of it is left. What is new is a production kitchen series, which Sukenari debuted in August 2026. As far as we can tell, we are one of the first shops anywhere to sell commercially available ZDP-247 kitchen knives from a reputable maker, and possibly the first.
Now the honest part. Sanyo Riki calls ZDP-247 a development grade, and the only thing we have been told about it is one line: powder stainless, heat-treat it like SRS-13. Proterial has never published a specification at all. So we cannot give you a carbon or chromium figure, because nobody outside Proterial has one.
What we can give you is how it cuts. Sukenari takes it to 63 to 64 HRC, a touch under where they run ZDP-189. It is a hard powder steel and it holds an edge like one: a long plateau, then a clear signal that it wants the stones. The surprise came on the stones themselves. We put the 247 and the 189 on the same ones, and the 247 gives up a burr without the fight. It still rewards a good stone. It is stainless on paper. So is ZDP-189, and that still spots if you leave it wet. Wipe it, keep it dry, and do not twist it through bone.
This is the Damascus: the same ZDP-247 core, clad in stainless damascus and mirror polished the way Sukenari finishes its ZDP-189 Mirror Damascus. The cladding is there for the eye, not the edge. The core does the cutting, and a mirror polish asks for more care to keep it looking new. If the ZDP-189 Mirror Damascus is the Sukenari you always wanted, this is that knife in the rarer steel.
