Diversity reigns in the Spyderco Salt series. At top is the Wharncliffe- style Atlantic Salt folder, at bottom the Caspian Salt diver’s knife.
Pat Covert
increasing the customer’s cost by a hundred dollars per blade. In other words, they just weren’t affordable.
H-1 Arrives Enter H-1 steel and Spyderco, a
marriage of corporate minds mak- ing rust-free, affordable knives pos- sible. Ever since they incorporated that little hole in the blade in 1981, Spyderco has always stayed on the forefront of knife zeitgeist, never afraid to offer new ideas and tech- nology. The H-1 steel alloy, devel- oped by Myodo Corporation in Japan, uses 0.10 percent nitrogen to replace carbon in achieving its rust-free properties. Spyderco buys up all the H-1 steel Myodo can pro- duce, which makes it exclusive to their knives. To get to this point (no
pun intended), however, required a lot of testing to be sure the product lived up to its potential. According to Spyderco President Sal Glesser, “When H-1 was initially presented to us by the Japanese we thought it groundbreaking because of its chemistry. We are always testing steels and proceeded with long-term testing. It has been positive enough to produce an entire line of Salt Se- ries that is growing yearly. H-1 is a completely new branch of steel and our customers continue to validate our testing.” Glesser continues. “In case no
one has noticed we’re a bit obsessive about steel testing, so we did what we do on all our steels: edge testing, break testing, Q-fog, manufactur- ing tests, manufacturability studies,
stress tests, real world usage appli- cations. We sent H-1 to metallur- gists and engineers for analyzing. What we’ve found is H-1 is special in that it’s nitrogen based and work hardens. In the world of steels this is proving to be a special thing be- cause
the
means it resists rust.” One other very important differ-
ence between H-1 and most conven- tional steels is it’s austenitic steel. The overwhelming majority of steels are martensitic steels, which require heat-treating in a furnace to achieve a hardness needed for proper use. Austenitic steel achieves its hard- ness when it is worked and becomes harder in one area the more it has been worked. Consequently, an H-1 blade is at it hardest and toughest
T SAYS NO TO CORROSION
WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM 49
nitrogen-versus-carbon
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