The Masahiro brand is one of the brightest representatives of the Japanese knife world and is known for its ideal price-quality ratio. The Masahiro company has a fairly solid history, it was founded in 1948. The president of the company, Koji Hattori, is also widely known as a specialist and popularizer of sharpening on Japanese water stones, whose master classes are known and loved far beyond Japan.
Today, Masahiro knives occupy 10% of the private sector (used in home kitchens) and 90% of the professional sector (chefs, food industry, etc.) on the Japanese market. First of all, such popularity in the professional market is due to the special resistance of Masahiro knives to blunting. The company produces three main series: kitchen, professional and professional with titanium handles, but the steel used for the cheapest series is the same as in professional ones!
The Masahiro company produces more than three and a half thousand different models of chef's cutting tools. In this respect, Masahiro is a leader not only in Japan, but also in the world. Initially, the blanks for the knives are produced by stamping extrusion from specially prepared sheet steel. This avoids problems with structural changes in the metal that occur during laser cutting and significantly reduces the cost of the future knife compared to waterjet cutting. Masahiro uses various materials for handles - wood, plastic, metal. In the production of wooden handles, an original technology is used, in which thin sheets of wood impregnated with a special composition (containing an antibacterial agent) are dried for a year, and then pressed to 80% of their volume. The resulting material is very well suited for mechanical processing, is not subject to dimensional deviation due to temperature and humidity changes, and has exceptional resistance to harmful environmental influences. At the same time, it retains the properties of wood tactilely and visually. One of the features of Masahiro knives is the line of steels used in the MRS series, which is the company's signature steel and was created specifically for Masahiro knife products. MRS steels are an ideal compromise between dry traditional Japanese steels, which are prone to chipping, and relatively soft European knife steels, which can dent. With a hardness of 59HRC, MRS steels do not chip, but at the same time hold an edge perfectly. And MRS steels are polished perfectly compared to their analogues. The blade hardening process is done manually, first the blades are heated to 980 degrees Celsius, and then cooled in oil at a temperature of 150 degrees (Yokiro process). Next comes the alignment of thermal leads under a press, which relieves mechanical stress in the metal. And then the blades are subjected to cryotreatment in liquid nitrogen (Sabzero process). All this allows you to achieve extremely critical indicators of cutting aggressiveness and resistance of the cutting edge to blunting in the finished product. After the heat treatment process, rough grinding and initial contouring of the leads is carried out, this is done by hardware using robotics. But the final grinding and finishing is carried out exclusively by hand. Masahiro products are represented by both series of traditional Japanese kitchen models and their European counterparts. But in all cases, Masahiro knives are not only extremely functional, but also very beautiful to decorate any kitchen.
