My LC200N Mule Rusted. How is that possible??

I’ll still be buying a Caribbean when it comes out and I’ll definitely be using it in salt water conditions. At the beach, fishing, etc.


I’ll report what I see. Don’t expect any problems really but if i see anything I’ll try and document it.
 
Sorry, this is sorta off topic, but the Caribbean has “stainless” liners. Wouldn’t that be a weak point for corrosion in a salt environment? (I’m considering it for a sailing trip this summer).
 
I thought Sal had mentioned using lc200n for the lock on the Caribbean. Also, I thought the hard part was getting a very corrosion resistant steel that still held an edge, and that it was not as hard to have one that would work for hardware, liners, etc.
 
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Thank you, Mr. Glesser! It will be really hard to pass up now.

Yep! I have been curious about what they would use for the liners. Glad (and not surprised) to hear they went the extra mile with this one. Between that and the ceramic detent ball, the Caribbean should prove more than “Salt-worthy”.
 
One thing I wanted to mention in this thread. I have half a dozen knives in Lc200n now and ALL of them have seen extreme corrosion testing. That means months of 24/7 submersion and exposure to salty water. All of them have proved to be 100% corrosion proof, except for my mule. That is the knife that showed two tiny pinhead sized spots after a few weeks on the kayak. That is still MILES ahead of what any other stainless would do in those conditions but it’s interesting that those tiny spots appeared at all. All of the other 5-6 knives have seen more exposure than the mule and none of them have shown any such corrosion. I don’t know if this is helpful but since it seems like the only folks that have ever seen Lc200n corrosion have seen it on the mules, I thought it was worth mentioning here.

Also worth mentioning, I have a Lc200n Spyderco Waterway prototype that has been left in saltwater 24/7 on the kayak since September wnd it’s still as unblemished as H1.
 
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I am curious if Sal Glesser Sal Glesser could chime in about any HT tweaks (if there were any) between the Mule and the following full production knives?
 
I finished re-abusing the mule. Few notes:
  • Removed any rust or tarnish from the previous treatment with a Scotch Brite pad
  • Immersed the entire blade in saturated salt water through Wednesday
  • Based on some notes I saw on corrosion testing, I then took the blade out, wrapped it in a paper towel, and put it back in the water with the blade sticking out, such that only the tang was in the water
  • Removed it today
Interestingly, there was no further corrosion on the blade itself. The damage from before is still there, but no new rust spots appeared. Some spotting did appear on the tang, especially around the cutouts. The tang had not been immersed in water on the first pass.

So, it does look that whatever was corroding on the blade itself was isolated to that one spot along the edge, and once gone, the rest of the blade really is extremely rust resistant. I guess this further supports the theory that the corrosion is due to impurities in the metal, and not the LC200N itself.

One thing I noticed with my tests is that all my rust spots appeared near where the metal had been worked - the edge and the cutouts in the tang. It's possible that the metal had been burnt while being ground down and drilled, which may have affected it's corrosion resistance. However, that wouldn't explain the corrosion the OP saw.

Next step will be to reprofile the mule, to fix the edge damage, and see if it still functions as it should.
 
Does anyone know if rust from a different metal acts as a corrosion catalyst for the nitrogen based metals like LCN200N?
 
Any updates? I just ordered a mule in this steel so was interested in the findings of the research.
 
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