My on going salt steel comparison journal

[Chinstrap]

Thanks for the good vibes, and useful insight regarding good blade maintenance; I'll be sure to source the recommended 'waxy' compounds when I get home.
A few days ago, my team and I were pressed into the dive system. The first dive was very muddy (and poor visibility) and I spent a lot of time digging around the seabed, derigging and rigging assorted equipment.
As per usual, we sent our suits and boots out, and hung up our personal tools in the transfer chamber. The next dive was a day later and I had a chance to inspect my knives. The H2 blade exhibited some very mild iron oxide (assumption) residue, as seen in the attached photo. It is fairly easily removed with a 3M 'Scotchbrite' pad.
From my own limited understanding of knifemaking however, it would seem likely as previously posited that this has all been a result of the grinding process of serration manufacture.
Thanks again all, for your support and valuable information.
And I look forward to frequenting this forum for more; stay salty!

Sincerely,
Christian

[Windward]

Been a while since I've updated this.
After a pretty brutal few months on my knives, I have seen mostly the staus quo but had a few surprises...

Magnacut is even more corrosion resistant than i originally wouldve thought. The occasional spot and around the pivot, but really no more than i ever got with lc200n.

Magnacut has held a sharper edge longer than lc200n, but taken more damage. If i was just cutting cardboard or sonething, magnacut would probabablly cut longer, but cutting through old heavy rope, hard fishing line, barnacles, etc magnacut has just chipped and rolled more. It does clean up pretty easily on the sharpmaker though.

The biggest dissapointment however was H2 rust. This knife had seen a fair amount of use this spring, but put away for a couple weeks. When i opened it up the other day i was surprised to see rust. Id never seen it on h1 or my other h2 knives. Mostly just wipes off with minimal staining, but a surprise none the less

[cabfrank]

Weird. I've definitely never see that on H1. I'll have to check my H2 later.

[JSumm]

That's crazy. After you clean it up, are you going to put it back to work and put it up dirty? If it happens again, I would send it to Spyderco and see if they can do any investigation. I haven't tried salt water on my Salt 2 in H2 yet, but I've definitely folded it up and put it away wet without issue. Curious how this ends up.

[Windward]

That's crazy. After you clean it up, are you going to put it back to work and put it up dirty? If it happens again, I would send it to Spyderco and see if they can do any investigation. I haven't tried salt water on my Salt 2 in H2 yet, but I've definitely folded it up and put it away wet without issue. Curious how this ends up.

Yeah probablly just going to bring it to work today. Hopefully just some sort of contamination. Bits of rope thimble or something that stuck to the blade. Couple days of heavy saltwater use should give me a good answer.

[VandymanG]

Thank you for this thread. One of the best reads on the forum. I’m now going to have to add an H1 and H2 knife steel blade to my collection. I’d being avoiding those steels due to reading how poor the edge retention was on plain edge knives. Not a problem now that I’ve discovered why people like the SE knives.