Every few years Sukenari does something the rest of the industry has not got round to. ZDP-189, HAP40, SRS-13, YXR7: Hanaki-san has a habit of being the first blacksmith to make a new powder steel behave in a kitchen knife, and ZDP-247 is the latest. It belongs to the same Hitachi (now Proterial) ZDP family as ZDP-189, but it is not a brand-new alloy. It was made to be forged rather than ground from a blank, and a handful of smiths, Murray Carter among them, have worked it since the early 2000s. What is new is a production kitchen-knife series built on it, which Sukenari debuted in August 2026. As far as we can tell, Knives and Stones is one of the first shops anywhere, and quite possibly the first, to sell commercially available ZDP-247 kitchen knives from a reputable maker.
Here is the honest part. ZDP-247 is what Sanyo Riki, the mill that laminates the core into the billets Sukenari forges, calls a development grade. The whole of the disclosed specification is one line: it is a powder stainless steel, and it should be heat-treated the way SRS-13 is. No composition table, no datasheet. Hanaki-san worked out the forging from there, and the blades come out at 63-64 HRC, a touch under where Sukenari runs ZDP-189. So I am not going to quote you a carbon or chromium figure, because nobody outside Proterial has one. What I can tell you is what the family behaves like, and one thing that is different. Expect very high wear resistance and edge life that outlasts most stainless steels several times over. The difference is on the stones: Hanaki-san told us ZDP-247 is easier to sharpen than ZDP-189, and having put both on the same stones in the shop, we agree. It still rewards a decent stone, but it gives up a burr without the fight ZDP-189 puts up. Stainless on paper, then, but ZDP-189 is stainless on paper too and will still spot if you leave it wet, so until owners have lived with this one for a while: wipe it, keep it dry, and do not twist it through bone.
We were at the Sukenari workshop in Toyama in August 2026, a few weeks after the series debuted, and Hanaki-san told the ZDP-247 story on camera. The steel is not young: it came out of Hitachi about thirty years ago, and by his account roughly a ton of it is left, although the people on the Hitachi, now Proterial, shop floor say it could be made again. Sukenari sends blades out to a hardening shop in Seki, and when the first ZDP-247 batch went through, the shop rang to ask what on earth the material was, because the structure was nothing like the powder stainless they usually see. The hardening shop had looked at the grain: far finer than the SG2 they see every day, and probably a rank of steel nobody in Seki had handled. He also let slip that a single-bevel ZDP-247 is next, a two-layer blade with a VG10 face. On the steel itself he put ZDP-247 next to SG2 for hardness and said it behaves more like a carbon steel than a stainless. His view of edge life is worth knowing: freshly sharpened, every steel cuts the same, and the difference is how the edge fades. The powder steels, SG2 and ZDP among them, hold and then drop off suddenly after some days, where his own XEOS fades gradually. So expect a long plateau and then a clear signal that it is time for the stones. When we asked what actually separates 247 from 189, he asked us to spare him that one and took it off the record, so that part stays a mystery for now.
This is the Damascus line: the same ZDP-247 core, but clad in stainless damascus and mirror polished the way Sukenari finishes its ZDP-189 Mirror Damascus. The layered cladding is there for the eye, not the edge; the core does the cutting, and a mirror polish asks for a little more care to keep it looking new. Sizes, handles and prices for the K&S batch will be added here when the knives are on the bench. If the ZDP-189 Mirror Damascus is the Sukenari you always wanted, this is that knife in the rarer steel.
