Ok, time for an update. My apologies for taking so long to get back to this thread but I was in the USA for a couple of weeks. The knife stayed in its corrosive torture chamber for the duration of my trip and when I arrived back home it looked exactly like it did when I left. No signs of corrosion anywhere. At this point I’m almost ready to rank this in the Vanax/LC200N range (at least) in corrosion resistance. (Could turn out to be better but it will take more time and testing to know that). As of now though it is looking like it is more than suitable for a Salt knife, even in extreme conditions.
Regarding the edge performance, I have not tested that as rigorously as the corrosion resistance but I have used it to clean a number of large fish like Corvina, Snapper, Amberjack and Mahi Mahi. I have done this type of work for years now with LC200n and I can say without a doubt that Magnacut is outperforming that steel by a wide margin. After 8-10 fish like this I would have seen significant blunting on LC200n but the Magnacut still shaves arm hair cleanly and has good bite on the thumb or 3 fingers. So a definite improvement over LC200n in edge holding. Compared to Vanax? That’s a harder comparison and would require more systematic testing.
Now it’s time for some more testing. One of the ways that LC200n has shown susceptibility to rust is through galvanic corrosion. When left in contact with a dissimilar metal (especially one with lower corrosion resistance) it can show corrosion at the point of contact. Actually it does not even have to be in contact. Just the rust from another steel, if it bleeds onto lc200n, can cause a corrosive reaction that can create rust on lc200n that would not have otherwise occurred. I have actually experienced this on a Vanax and a LC200n knife that had non stainless hardware on the sheaths. The hardware bled a little rust that dripped onto the blade and both steels showed some pitting and edge degradation from that contact.
I know that this does not occur equally with all steels though. I have seen it happen to a similar degree on Vanax and LC200n and when I cleaned off the superficial rust I could see notable pitting on the steel when viewing with a 10x loupe. I have had similar experience with hardware bleeding rust onto H1 and the superficial rust wiped off and there was ZERO damage to the steel itself. So we know that H1 is a special kind of animal in this regard. What I’m curious is where does Magnacut fall in this scale? Will it be prone to the same damage from galvanic corrosion as Vanax and LC200n? Will it be worse? Or will it be closer to H1 in that type of corrosion resistance.
Honestly, I’m not overly concerned about the answer to this question. Spyderco has done a great job of executing production techniques to minimize and even eliminate this type of corrosion but it’s still an interesting question. I think we can all agree that whether we need it or not we all like a Salt knife to be as bulletproof as possible. That said, I was willing to give up that small bit of corrosion resistance for better edge performance when switching to lc200n…and that is coming from someone who is probably one of the more extreme use cases for the Salt knives. But now that I know that Magnacut has notably better edge performance at no apparent loss of corrosion resistance, I want to answer some of these smaller questions. If I find that it performs as well as lc200n in regard to galvanic corrosion then I’m all in on this steel. If it actually had some advantage in galvanic corrosion then it will be a holy grail steel for me.
So here’s my backyard experiment. I took an old Waterway and my mule, placed a piece of a small nail on the blade and doused both of them with a HIGH concentration saltwater. I plan to check each day with a loupe and see how both steels are responding then reapply more saltwater. I will try to update this thread as I have results.
Here is a photo of the setup.
