VG10W vs VG10: what does 0.40% tungsten actually buy you?

VG10W is VG10 with one deliberately small change: 0.40% tungsten. Takefu, the steelmaker, credits that tungsten with hard, fine carbides that improve wear resistance and ease of sharpening, and rates the steel 20% higher in durability and strength and 25% higher in cutting performance on a blade test, a point harder at hardening, with the same corrosion resistance. That is a clear, sourced pitch, and we will give you the catch before the maker's sales sheet would. 0.40% is a small addition, and a well-heat-treated VG10 is already excellent, so in most hands the everyday gap is subtle. Buy VG10W for measurable edge life from a maker you trust, not for a transformation.

Side by side, these are the same steel with one column changed. Carbon 1.0, chromium 15.0, molybdenum 1.0, vanadium 0.25, cobalt 1.55: identical on both sheets. The only delta is tungsten, 0.0% in VG10 and 0.40% in VG10W. On top of that Takefu rates VG10W a point harder at hardening, 61+ against 60+ HRC, and attributes 20% higher durability and strength and 25% higher cutting performance on a blade test, with equal corrosion resistance. Everything else you might ask about, from care to sharpening feel to rust behaviour, carries straight over from what you already know about VG10.

The whole story fits on one line of the composition table. VG10 runs C 1.0, Cr 15.0, Mo 1.0, V 0.25, Co 1.55. VG10W runs the same five numbers and adds W 0.40. That is a refinement rather than a redesign. The tungsten precipitates hard, fine carbides that sit in the steel and resist abrasion, and Takefu credits them for the wear resistance and the slightly longer edge. But notice the scale. At 0.40%, tungsten nudges the carbide story; it does not rewrite it. The steel stays in the same family, takes the same care routine, and stays stainless.

Here are the numbers Takefu itself publishes, and the attribution stays on them. Compared with VG10, VG10W has 20% higher durability and strength and 25% higher cutting performance in blade test evaluation, while maintaining the same corrosion resistance. Both figures come from Takefu's own material rather than our bench, and we would rather say so than let them read as ours. The 25% cutting figure is specifically described in the Japanese text as a blade-evaluation result, which is a laboratory metric and not a general promise about sharpness. Treat the pair of them as what they are: the steelmaker's stated rationale for adding tungsten, useful and plausible, flagged as a spec-sheet claim rather than restated as our own measurement.

Takefu rates VG10W at 61+ HRC against VG10's 60+, and the tungsten earns part of that. It improves hardenability, so the steel reaches higher hardness at quench, and unusually it holds that hardness even after high-temperature tempering. Durability under heat is why VG10W suits hard-use blades and surface-coated blades that need a tempering step, where a steel that softens under heat would give ground away. In the kitchen it reads as a slightly longer-wearing edge. Two honest limits. These are Takefu's hardening-hardness floors rather than finished-knife working hardness, and knives vary by maker and batch, so we do not print a single working range as though it were a universal spec.

Because the tungsten carbides are fine rather than coarse, the usual worry about a harder-wearing stainless — that it stops taking an edge — does not apply here. Takefu credits the same tungsten with ease of sharpening. On a whetstone VG10W behaves like the VG10 you already know: responsive, pleasant to raise an edge on, no exotic stones required. What changes is how long that edge keeps working. Takefu's blade test puts VG10W 25% ahead of VG10 on cutting performance, so the same board work should leave you sharpening a little less often. If you found VG10 easy to keep sharp, VG10W is the same habit with a bit more time between sessions.

Add a harder-wearing steel and the first question is corrosion. The answer is that nothing moves. VG10W carries the same 15% chromium as VG10, comfortably inside stainless territory, and Takefu states the corrosion resistance is the same. So the familiar trade — stainless convenience against a slightly keener carbon edge — sits exactly where it did. You trade up in edge life without trading down in rust behaviour. As with any 15% chromium steel, it is stainless rather than stain-proof, so rinse and dry the blade, especially in humid or coastal kitchens.

We would be doing you a disservice to hand you the maker's sheet and stop there. Independent steel references make the point that 0.40% tungsten is a modest addition: tungsten has a very high molar mass, so 0.40% by weight is relatively few atoms, and the practical effect is subtle enough that two identical knives, one in each steel, would be hard to tell apart in ordinary use. That is not an attack on the steel. It is the calibration. The measurable gains, the 20% and the 25%, are Takefu's own laboratory figures. Our read: VG10W is a genuinely good, harder-wearing steel, and also a small step rather than a leap over an already-excellent VG10. Deciding on paper, you now have both sides of it.

Here is the part most comparisons skip. The maker, the heat treatment and the grind decide far more about how a knife cuts than the badge on the box, and that is truer here than almost anywhere, because the two steels are 0.40% apart. A poorly heat-treated VG10W will cut worse than a well-heat-treated VG10, because a steel only shows what the workshop lets it. So treat the tungsten as a tie-breaker at most. All else equal, VG10W holds its edge a little longer. All else is rarely equal.

There are two kinds of sharp, and they frame what the tungsten changes. The first is peak keenness, meaning how fine an apex the steel takes the day you sharpen it. The second is the working edge, meaning how much of that keenness survives a fortnight of boards and onions. VG10 and VG10W sharpen to a very similar peak. The tungsten's fine, hard carbides stretch the working-edge side further. You are not buying a keener knife. You are buying one that stays closer to its best for longer between touch-ups. And if you enjoy the ritual of a quick stone session, both will reward you the same way.

Buy VG10W if you want a measurable edge-life premium over VG10 from a maker you already trust, you sharpen on a whetstone happily, and you accept that this is one small refinement rather than a new class of knife. It also earns its place on harder-use blades, where holding hardness through a high-temperature temper genuinely matters.

Buy VG10 (or stay with it) if you want the proven baseline and the far wider field of knives built on it, or you would rather put the difference toward better fit, finish and geometry from a maker you like. The tungsten is a bonus, not a requirement.

Care is identical to VG10 and takes seconds. It is a 15% chromium stainless, which means stainless rather than stain-proof: rinse and dry the blade after use, don't leave it in the sink, wipe it dry before it goes away, store it dry, and keep it out of the dishwasher. In a humid or coastal kitchen, dry steel is happy steel. When the edge finally goes, K&S sharpens and re-profiles both steels in-store, so you can hand it over rather than fight it on the wrong stone.

Written by James Zhang for Knives & Stones. Disclosure: we sell both steels, so we have no stake in steering you to one over the other, and our honest answer is that most kitchens already have what they need in VG10.

How to read our claims: cited means a number comes from published testing with a source link, and on this page that source is Takefu's own blade-evaluation testing, because no third-party laboratory has published a test of VG10W; maker-stated means the steelmaker's published specification, which varies by batch, covering the 20% durability and strength figure, the 61+ and 60+ hardening-hardness floors and the equal-corrosion claim; reasoned means it follows from composition and our bench experience; and independent steel references marks the honest caveat that 0.40% tungsten is a modest addition. No number here is claimed as our own test result.

Primary source: Takefu Special Steel (e-tokko.com), the VG10W and VG10 material pages. Both steels are made by Takefu Special Steel in Japan. VG10W is new to market, so there is no settled price baseline to quote and none is asserted here. Reviewed August 2026.