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This above image is from the Spyderco website, the Salt which is described below has a plain/straight edges.
From the Spyderco webpage on the Pacific Salt :
A big myth in the knife world is that out there somewhere is a knife that seriously cuts but cannot rust. Knives claiming these super powers are usually made with steels that are unable to hold a cutting edge for any measurable amount of time. Finally a steel foundry in Japan called Myodo Foundry makes this myth a reality with the introduction of a new steel called H1. H1 steel is a PH steel, meaning it is a precipitation-hardened steel. "Huh" you ask? Utilizing .1% nitrogen instead of carbon to harden the steel, it reaches a Rockwell hardness of 57-58rc. Spyderco uses H1 on its new C91 Pacific Salt model. It's PlainEdge or SpyderEdge and is similar in shape and size to Spyderco's best-selling Endura model but with a slightly more rounded tip. All internal steel parts are treated as well making them impervious to rust and pitting and of course, salt. Those challenged by cleaning and maintaining their knives will find the Pacific Salt stays rust-free even if put away wet. The blade's hole is enlarged to 14mm for easier opening/closing with gloved, wet or cold hands. Textured in a checkerboard pattern, the black FRN handle has a grippy texture and is fitted with a reversible metal pocket clip which positions for right-handers and lefties. The addition of a lanyard hole offers a backup method of attachment (thong or lanyard cord) for use around water where once dropped, a knife is often lost or elusively hard to retrieve.
The Salt has an overall length of 8 5/8" with a blade length of 3 13/16" with a 3 3/8" cutting edge. The knife is made by stock removal out of H1 stainless steel with a dual sabre hollow grind which is 0.490" high on a 0.117" thick blade. The primary grind tapers to a fine edge, 0.016-0.022" thick at back, which is ground at an acute 15.1 (6) degrees per side.
The Pacific Salt made push cuts through the 3/8" hemp with 18 (2) lbs and had solid aggression on a slice, making a cut in 12 (1) lbs, showing a complete sharpness profile. It did well on carving hardwoods, carving a point on a piece of birch hardwood with 76 (5) % of the efficiency of a stock Paramiltary.
The point on the Pacific Salt is fairly robust due to the slightly rounded tip which shows readily in some penetration work. On a phonebook it sinks 133 (7) pages with a 50 lbs push, and 606 (29) pages with a hard vertical stab.
The Pacific Salt was initiall sharp enough to cut even the most difficult of foods cleanly such as over ripe tomatoes, soft mushrooms as well as trim meats and cut away fat on both cooked and raw meats. It also responded well to the traditional steels commonly used in kitchens. While the sabre-hollow grind doesn't offer the same level of cutting ability as the high flat grinds on some Spyderco models like the Paramilitary, due to the very thin and acute edge on the Pacific Salt the cutting ability is still in general very high.
Specifically, on three inches carrots, when the Paramilitary was taking 9-11 lbs to make a cut, the Pacific Salt was just behind at 11-13. As the carrots got smaller a difference could still be felt, but it was now at a pound or less. While this isn't the choice to make paper thin slices of potatos for a crusty breakfast 'tater cake, in general there are no complaints outside of working on very large thick vegetables like turnips.
Probably one of the stronger features of the knife for food preperation is that the steel is well suited to kitchen use as the resistance to corrosion is extremely high. The Pacific Salt and won't rust even if left exposed to salt water for extended periods of time, plus it is fairly tough and ductile so has decent chip resistance for a stainless steel.
The Pacific Salt works well trimming light brush, it can cleanly cut through the 1/2" thick Alder branches with a light wrist pop. The NIB highly polished edge works well on most grasses and light vegetation but had problems with harder stalks, especially those that were dead and dried. After applying a more coarse edge finish with the medium Spyderco rods the Pacific Salt handled all such vegetation cutting with ease.
Using the Pacific Salt to open a can of peas, as well as cut the metal into strips, the edge turned visibly but didn't chip. If this was going to be a significant part of the scope of work of the knife it would benefit from a 20 degree secondary edge bevel. The hardness of the steel is lower in general than most cutlery steels and thus will require a steeper bevel to cut harder materials. In general no issues were noted with ropes, plastics, wood and various synthetics.
Carpet : through some extended cutting of used carpet the Pacific Salt did well when used with a rougher finish compared to the finer finish on a Paramiliary showing how a suitable finish is just as critical as the steel type. However with both were used at a similar finish, the Pacific Salt well behind.
The Pacific Salt and Byrd Meadowlark were used slice 1/4" and 1/8" ridged cardboard and 1/8" through three centimeters of edge. Previously the primary edges had been reground on both to 6.5 and 6.3 degrees respectively for the Pacific Salt and Meadowlark. A micro-bevel at 20 degrees and about 1-2 tenths of a millimeter wide was applied to each with the medium rods of the Sharpmaker. Sharpness was measured by slicing light cotton under 200 grams of tension. The average results of two trials for each card stock with complete sharpenings :
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At the end of the 1/4" cardboard comparison both blades could still slice newsprint, they could both still push cut it on a 45 after 9.7 meters was cut. At the end of the 1/8" ridged cardboard the blades would no longer slice newsprint. In short, there was no significant difference in edge retention between the two blades.
Plywood : A small Sebenza, the Pacific Salt and a Bryd Meadowlark, had all been reprofiled flat to the primary grinds, leaving primary edges of 5.8, 6.5, and 6.3 degrees respectively. The blades were hand sharpened and micro-bevels applied with a Sharpmaker using Jeff Clarks's burr removal method. Due to hand sharpening there was a convexity to the bevels so they increased in angle towards the very edge. The actual edge bevel in the last 1/8" was 10.0 (5), 10.5 (4), and 10.3 (5) for the small Sebenza, Meadowlark and Pacific Salt respectively. The complete process was :
This was mainly intended to be a rougher more qualitative test just to benchmark the ranking of the blades as they are radically different steels. The main criteria to judge sharpness was the ability to cut paper. There were three main benchmarks :
There were three runs of cutting performed with a complete sharpening each time on the 3/8" plywood. 2" long cuts were made to a depth of 1/16". A total of 310 cuts were made with the sharpness checked every 10*2^n cuts. All blades initially did a push cut at 90. The Sebenza was in general sharper than the Pacific Salt which was sharper than the Meadowlark in terms of smoothness of cut. The differences were small but they could easily be felt. It could be noticed when shaving as well.
During the first round heavy force was applied (75 lbs), the Sebenza chipped during the first ten slices and lost a piece of the edge a millimeter deep. At 150 cuts it had several visible pieces out of the edge and the entire edge was distorted. The Pacific Salt and Meadowlark lost the 90 degree push cutting ability after 10 cuts but push cut at 45 until 150 cuts and after 310 slices could still do the 45 degree slice easily. The Meadowlark was ahead of the Pacific Salt but they were very close. On light cotton the Pacific Salt was 21 (11) % more degraded, just barely on the point of significance (average of all three rounds).
For the next round the force was reduced to half. The Sebenza was still the most heavily effected and after the first ten cuts the edge was visbly distorted and the microbevel had cracked off from 1/2 to 3/4 width (0.15 mm wide). The other two knives went right to 310 cuts with the same behavior as before.
In the final round very light force was used (15 lbs). The Sebenza did the first ten cuts with no damage however after the next 20 cuts it was chipped out to less than half its micro-bevel. In the places not chipped it was still able to push cut at 90 so was sharper than the other blades. After another 40 cuts the Sebenza just lost the push cutting ability at 90 but in some sections the micro-bevel was again just cracked off in places. The performance of the Meadowlark and Pacific Salt was consistent with previous behavior. It made no difference to those blades if the force was 75 lbs or 15 lbs. After 310 cuts most of the micro-bevel was removed on both blades, however due to the acute primary edge they could still readily slice newsprint. As a final check, the micro-bevels on the Pacific Salt and Meadowlark were applied taking twice as many passes on the fine rods (20 per side) to thicken the bevels to see if that made any difference. It made no difference at all. They blunted exactly the same.
A Calypso Jr. in ZDP-189 (64/65 HRC) was also later used to repeat the work, the edge on the Calypso Jr. was adjusted to 7.2 (8) degrees per side and also given a slight micro-bevel at 20 degrees on the fine Sharpamaker rods. In short the performance was much higher than the other blades. On an average of three runs the Calypso Jr. would cut 150 slices before losing the ability to push cut on a 90 and never was reduced to the point where it needed a slice. The sharpening with it was also not full resets each time and thus with a more careful run, it may get to the full 310 cuts and still puch cut at 90, it did for one of the runs. The damage at the edge of the cutting for the Calypso Jr. was a fraction of what was seen on the Meadowlark and Pacific Salt. It was also used for a few test cuts at high force where it cut entire sections off of the plywood strip, didn't whittle into it, just sliced right through it. No significant damage after 20 heavy cuts. An overview :
| Model | push at 90 | push at 45 | slice at 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| nuber of slices on plywood | |||
| Calypso Jr | 150 | 310 | - |
| Pacific Salt | 10 | 150 | 310 |
| Meadowlark | 10 | 150 | 310 |
The Sebenza could not be included because cutting with it had to be suspended in each round due to excessive damage. The extent of blunting with the Sebenza after 70 cuts with light force (15) was similar to 310 cuts with heavy force (75 lbs) with the Salt / Meadowlark.
The Pacific Salt has a very high grinability and tends to have minimal burr formation and is thus very easy to sharpen. a clean microbevel and an evenly ground primary edge profile. The ease of sharpness rating for this steel in this grind geometry is very high. The knife was eventually reground turning the sabre hollow grind into a sabre flat grind with no secondary edge bevel as shown on the right. The main effect was an increase in the ease of sharpening due to the micro-bevel being set more narrow. It also made a significant increase in the cutting ability on woods and similar materials.
| The handle is quite large, 4.75", and is easily big enough for a full grip with a large hand even while wering a gloce. The thumb ramp grooves aid in security slightly, but are significantly inferior to the ones on the Alantic Salt. The grip is very versatile and the only weak point is that the choil region isn't large or extensive enough to actually support an index finger position grip unlike the choil region on the Alantic Salt handle. It also works well in reverse grip: |
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The lock on the Pacific Salt was stable under white knuckling, torques and various heavy grips, with the stability in the latter enhanced by the milled out section of the lock bar which aids in preventing accidental releases.
Comments can be emailed using cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com or by posting in the following thread on :
More information can be obtained at the Spyderco website. The following thread and post are also likely of interest :
| Last updated : | 10 : 05 : 2006 |
| Originally written: | 05 : 05 : 2005 |