Benjamin Kamon

1.2519 is the classic German oil-hardening Cr-W-V tool steel — close kin to AISI O7 and a sister to 1.2419, with a touch more vanadium for finer carbides. The tungsten and chromium combine to produce hard, finely dispersed carbides that allow a thin geometry to hold an edge longer than the simple carbons, while the vanadium keeps grain size tidy through the heat treat.

In a kitchen knife, it lands comfortably between 62 and 64 HRC and behaves like a slightly more wear-resistant W2 — that is, it sharpens with little fuss on most stones, takes a fine edge, and rewards a deliberate heat treatment more than it punishes a casual one. It will patina, sometimes attractively, sometimes alarmingly to a first-time carbon owner; either way, a wipe-and-dry habit is enough to keep it civil.

You will find 1.2519 in the work of European bladesmiths who want a step up in edge retention from white-paper carbons without losing the easy stone feel. Among the makers Modern Cooking carries, Benjamin Kamon, Martin Huber, Tobias Heldqvist, Jonas Johnsson, and MCx work in 1.2519. It is one of the more honest "European answers to Aogami" — not the same metallurgy, but a similar relationship between feel at the stone and edge longevity.

Apex Ultra is one of the most carefully engineered non-stainless kitchen knife steels in modern circulation — a steel designed from the ground up specifically for handmade knives, rather than borrowed from another industry. It was developed by metallurgist Larrin Thomas together with smiths Marco Guldimann and Tobias Hangler. It is a low-alloy carbon steel — roughly 1.25 percent carbon, 2.6 percent tungsten, 1.5 percent chromium and a 0.4 percent vanadium addition, with manganese and silicon kept low. That composition is tuned for high purity and a fine, evenly distributed mix of chromium-enriched iron carbides, tungsten carbides and vanadium carbides — the structure that lets it hold a very hard edge without the coarse carbides or plate martensite that sap toughness in other high-hardness carbon steels.

What this means for a cook is unusual permission. Apex Ultra carries very high toughness in the 66+ HRC range — the highest of any knife steel its developers have tested at that hardness — so you can ask a maker to grind it thin and run the heat treatment hard, and the edge will hold far longer than the carbon steels smiths usually forge, without microchipping. It forges and forge-welds much like 52100 or 1.2562, sharpens cleanly on natural and synthetic stones without needing diamond plates, and its modest chromium slows patina a little — though it is not stainless and should be cared for as a carbon steel.

Apex Ultra has become a signature steel of the European maker community, and the Modern Cooking catalogue carries an unusually deep bench of smiths working in it. Tobias Hangler himself heads that group, alongside Marco Guldimann, Benjamin Kamon, Martin Huber, Jonas Johnsson, Karol Karyś, Birch & Bevel, and MCx. It is genuinely a step forward — one of the relatively few cases where the marketing claims and the underlying metallurgical data are saying the same thing.