T3 is a stainless steel distinguished by its extremely fine carbide particles.
This material was researched and developed over four years by Mr. Masashi Fujiwara, the owner of Gassan Yoshitaka Cutlery. Working together with our team for an additional year and a half, we continued refining the steel until it finally reached the prototype stage. T3 represents a completely new type of stainless alloy steel.
In general, stainless steels contain larger carbides than carbon steels, and due to their higher hardness, they often face challenges in terms of sharpness and ease of sharpening.
However, despite being a stainless alloy steel, T3 features exceptionally fine carbides.
Under microscopic observation, its microstructure appears closer to that of carbon steel than to conventional stainless steels used for knives.
In the comparison images below, Silver No. 3 and T3.
The white dots represent carbide particles, and you can clearly see the dramatic difference in their size.
Silver No.3
T3
One of the greatest advantages of T3 is its excellent corrosion resistance as a stainless steel, making daily maintenance easy—especially valuable in professional kitchens.
Conventional stainless steels, on the other hand, often have:
-lower edge retention
-more difficulty during sharpening
Thanks to its ultra-fine carbides, T3 offers significantly improved sharpenability and can achieve a cutting performance comparable to carbon steel.
The finer the carbides, the wider the range of possible edge finishes.
A useful analogy is the difference between a brick mixed with large stones and one made with fine, evenly distributed sand.
If a steel contains large carbides, no matter how fine the whetstone is, the edge cannot be finished finer than the carbide size.
But with T3’s exceptionally fine carbides,
the blade can be sharpened to anything from a coarse edge to a very fine edge, allowing the knife to be optimized for various culinary applications.
In short, T3 represents a new direction in steel development—not reliant on “numbers,” HRC hardness, or data-driven performance alone.
Instead, it was created based on extensive feedback from top chefs, resulting in a stainless alloy steel designed to deliver a knife that truly feels intuitive, comfortable, and highly functional in actual use.