The Etching Says Japanese Steel. The Metal Says Otherwise. So I Had It Tested.

Most hairdressers will never be able to tell whether the steel in their scissors is what the label claims. Not by looking, not by cutting — not for the first few weeks, anyway. I've sharpened scissors professionally since 2007 — more than one hundred thousand pairs across every brand sold in this country — and the difference between a genuine Japanese mill steel and its cheap lookalike still can't be seen. It can only be measured. So I measured it.

Here's the uncomfortable part. A mislabelled steel is invisible to 99.9% of the people who buy it. You can't see it. You can't feel it in the cut for the first few weeks. Most sharpeners wouldn't pick it either — because you only learn the difference by grinding thousands of genuinely different steels and watching how each one answers the stone. The diamond plate doesn't read marketing. A steel tells you what it is by how it fights back.

There may be a handful of people in this country who can make that call off the bench. I'm one of them. And I got tired of being the only one who knew.

So I had the steel tested.

The testing: XRF and Rockwell, in plain English

X-ray fluorescence spectrometry — XRF — reads the elemental composition of a steel: the chromium, the molybdenum, the vanadium, the cobalt. Every alloy grade has a fingerprint. Genuine 440C carries no vanadium; the 9Cr18MoV family does. ATS-314 carries cobalt where plain 440C carries none. The XRF doesn't care what the laser etching says. It reads what's actually in the metal.

XRF answers what is this steel? It can't answer was it treated properly? — and the right alloy hardened wrong is still a bad scissor. That's the second instrument: Rockwell hardness testing. The HRC number tells you whether the heat treatment was done like it matters. Together, the two tests give you the complete picture — the recipe, and whether the cook cared.

Neither test is exotic. Any brand selling you a "premium Japanese steel" scissor could run both for less than the price of one pair. Ask yourself why so few publish the numbers.

What the tests found

I tested competitor scissors sold to Australian hairdressers at professional prices — the kind of money you'd hand over believing you were buying a Japanese blade.

The majority of the steel I tested was not what the etching claimed. The pattern, again and again: a premium Japanese steel name lasered on the blade, and a 9Cr-family composition in the metal. The results were exactly what the diamond plate had been telling me for years. The instrument just made it undeniable.

In fairness to the steel

Let me be fair to 9Cr, because the steel itself is not the villain. The 9Cr family is China's close analogue of 440C. Properly heat-treated, at $150 and honestly labelled, it makes a perfectly reasonable apprentice scissor — I'd say so to any apprentice at the bench. The scandal isn't the steel. The scandal is the etching. When a $150 steel wears a Japanese name and a $600 price tag, the steel is fine; the invoice is the fraud.

Why the names aren't here

I'm not publishing the brands today. Every one of them knows whether their scissor was on my bench.

That's not caution — it's the point. Name one brand and one brand has a bad week. Publish the method and the pattern, and every mislabelled blade in the country is now sold by someone wondering if they're in the drawer. The test results are kept, dated and documented. The drawer stays closed exactly as long as the etchings start telling the truth.

The bench test stays in the drawer. The marketing doesn't.

The XRF results are unnamed on purpose. But the claims those results contradict are not hidden — they're published, right now, on the sellers' own websites, in writing. You can read them yourself and see the contradiction before any metal is tested. We've documented several, verbatim, with dates and the public business records:

• Matsui and Scissor Tech — one Western Australian company (TNL Digital Pty Ltd) running two "rival" brands. Scissors titled "VG10" are described in their own copy as "Aichei 440C Japanese Steel" — VG10 and 440C are different steels, "Aichei" isn't a steel at all, and neither site says where the scissors are made.
• The "9CR13 Japanese steel" problem — how a Chinese GB designation gets sold under a Japanese label, and why "440C Japanese Steel" is a mixed metaphor (440C is an American grade name).
• Global Scissors — whose own Our Story page lists "9CR13 Cobalt, 440C surgical grade or VG10" as "the Japanese metals" they use. 9CR13 is a Chinese designation.
• Japan Scissors and Scissor Hub — two storefronts, one Queensland trading trust.
• Osaka and Zen Master — Osaka says both "100% Made in Japan" and "crafting scissors in Australia"; Zen Master lists "Japanese 440C" (an American grade name) and is run by recent Australian operators. The whole category, read together.

The pattern is always the same: a Japanese-sounding brand name, an American or Chinese grade name in the fine print, a "Japanese steel" adjective doing the selling, and no stated country of manufacture. The name on the box is the marketing. The grade in the description is the tell. This is the whole reason we test — and the whole reason so many "Japanese" scissors come across the bench soft, unable to hold the set, and not worth the sharpen.

What this means when you're buying

You can't run an XRF in a salon. You don't have to. You just have to ask for three things in writing before you spend professional money:

1. The named alloy. Not "Japanese steel." Not "premium steel." The grade: ATS-314, ZA-18, VG10, 440C, 9Cr18MoV. A seller who won't name the alloy is telling you the answer.
2. The measured hardness. A specific HRC figure for that model — not a catalogue-wide range. If nobody ever measured it, nobody ever checked it.
3. The mill and the origin. Where the steel was made, and who made the scissor. "Japanese steel" from a seller who can't name a Japanese mill is a label, not a fact.

Three questions, one email. An honest maker answers in a day. A marketer changes the subject.

For what it's worth, here's how we answer them: every ShearGenius scissor states its alloy on the product page — genuine Japanese mill steels, ATS-314 and Japanese Cobalt Alloy across the range, with ZA-18 joining it — each model with its measured HRC published, forged in Japan and hand-finished at my bench in Lake Wendouree. That's not a boast; it's just what the three questions look like when the answers exist. See why our scissors cost more or the range itself.

If you want to know what's actually in your current pair — bring them out when the van is in your town and ask me. Reading steel is the job.

Matt Grumley · Founder · Scissorsmith · Since 2007

Common questions

Can you tell real Japanese steel scissors by looking at them?

No. Not by eye, not by feel, and not in the cut for the first few weeks. A mislabelled steel is invisible to almost everyone who buys it — the difference only shows under measurement (XRF for composition, Rockwell for hardness) or over months of wear on the edge.

What is XRF testing on scissors?

X-ray fluorescence spectrometry reads the elemental composition of the steel — chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt. Every alloy grade has a fingerprint, so an XRF reading shows what the metal actually is, regardless of what's etched on the blade.

What does a Rockwell hardness test tell you?

Whether the heat treatment was done properly. The HRC figure shows if the steel was hardened like it matters — the right alloy treated badly still makes a poor scissor. Composition plus hardness is the complete picture.

Is 9Cr steel bad?

No. The 9Cr family is China's close analogue of 440C, and properly treated it makes an honest apprentice-priced scissor. The problem is never the steel — it's a 9Cr blade wearing a premium Japanese name and a premium price.

How do I check what steel my scissors really are before buying?

Ask for three things in writing: the named alloy grade, the measured HRC for that model, and the mill or origin of the steel. An honest maker answers all three in a day.

Related: the naming systems behind the labels — is 9CR13 Japanese steel?

For a worked example of how the label can contradict itself before the metal is even tested, see is Matsui steel VG10 or 440C? — the same scissor called VG10 in the title and 440C in the description.