Xinguo’s Honyaki are special items in many ways, the look, the steel and even the maker and region of production. These blades are truly remarkable to look at, and I don’t want that statement to overshadow the performance of them. This ApexUltra Honyaki really stands up to this studio’s motto: Pursuit beyond high proficiency in forging and polishing, but seek strong expression in different products.
You might think the name ApexUltra doesn’t sound very Japanese, and it is indeed not. This is an alloy carbon steel developed by European and American metallurgists based on 52100 and Blue Super that aims to be the best available culinary carbon steel. It behaves like those two steel but has a much better performance in working hardness, edge retention and toughness at high hardness. It really makes Xinguo’s knives stand out as I don’t expect Japanese makers to pick up this new foreign steel any time soon.
ApexUltra is excellent in its hardness, with regular oil quench, it can reach 65 HRC easily, which you would have to push for with Blue Super, but Xinguo pushes this even further by performing a water quench rather than a safer and perfectly viable oil quench, because this steel need quicker quench to produce hamon. This brings the steel to its highest achievable hardness of 67-68 HRC, which is unheard of in the world of Honyaki. I’m not sure how they manage the failure rate but it is impressive to know something like this can be done. This hardness allows a very thin and fine edge to be put onto these Honyaki knives, combining with a quite well controlled convex grind, the cutting performance can go toe to toe with some of the Japanese counterparts that produce similar knives.
The appearance would be a totally different story, and I think Xinguo has achieved their goal of seeking strong expression with this knife. This surface of the knife is entirely covered by very strong alloy banding, and the fine glitter-like pattern has such a strong texture that makes me think of the legendary Wooz steel. This alloy banding is a phenomenon commonly found on alloy carbon steel especially those with a lot of Tungsten, but this is not common especially like this one with strong contrast. To intensify this look, the blade is etched to increase the contrast. The harmon turns to a light grey colour with brighter banding over it, but the hardened steel shows a light blue sheen, which looks breathtaking when paired with the mirror polishing and the white banding floating over it.
The knife takes a more Sakai style profile, but made a bit wider than typical, although Honyaki tend to be some of the more “collector items” this board blade with a pretty thin edge would still be happy to chop through whatever you feed to it. For head chefs and collectors, this line offers a reasonable option for you to experience a premium Hoyaki Ownership, but I say the price speaks very little about how well these blades are made, whether in terms of fit and finish, craftsmanship or overall design and aesthetics.
