Spyderco AQUA SALT: In Depth Review

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Vivi

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Spyderco Aqua Salt

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Specifications


The Spyderco Aqua Salt is a fixed blade knife constructed of H1 steel, with an FRN handle molded directly to the knife tang. The blade features a hollow saber grind and a swedge. The handle features Spydercos bi-directional texturing to improve grip, and flares at the ricasso and pommel areas to ensure a secure hold on the knife. The sheath and clip are constructed of FRN. The measurements from Spydercos site are:

length overall 9 1/4" (235mm)
blade length 4 11/16" (120mm)
cutting edge 4 1/4" (108mm)
weight 4.2oz (119g)
hole diameter 15/64" (6mm)
blade thickness 1/8" (3mm)

Some comparison photos:



Sheath



The sheath for the Aqua Salt is put together well and made of FRN, which is durable and resists scratching and denting.

It comes with a G clip attachment system, which is a very well thought out attachment clip for fixed blades. It's simpler, cheaper and more effective than a tek-lok in most cases. The G clip can be clipped to a belt, pack strap, waistline or pocket, which lets it be carried in many ways a tek-lok cannot be used for.

The sheath is drilled in two spots to accept the G clip, which can be mounted for vertical, horizontal or diagonal carry, left or right handed. In addition the sheath features 7 steel reinforced eyes for using with paracord to devise alternative carry setups to the G clip. The variety of carry options is a fantastic feature of the sheath.

The retention is perfect. The knife comes out easily, especially if you use your thumb for leverage, yet the knife will not accidentally fall out. Vigorous shaking of the knife and sheath in the hand, intentionally trying to dislodge the knife from the sheath, does nothing. I've also carried the knife inverted on my backpack strap when hiking and have had the same experience. The knife stays put until I want it to come out, which is exactly how the sheath should function.

There is also a drainage hole near the tip and the Spyderco logo.

The carry methods I tried were horizontal on the front of my belt, vertical on my right hip and inverted from my backpack strap. All were comfortable and worked well. If worn in a way so the handle is underneath the shirt and rubbing against the skin, the highly textured handle can be a bit uncomfortable.



Ergonomics



The ergonomics of the knife are very good. The Aqua Salt is comfortable in a variety of grips. The handle feels just a hair oversized for me, which is the opposite of my usual experience with most knives. This, along with the large flares towards the front and rear of the handle make the knife work very well with gloves on. Wearing thick winter gloves I can get a full, secure grip on the knife easily.

The handle features Spydercos bi-directional texturing, which works to resist letting your hand slide forward or back on the handle. The handle also has large front and rear guard to keep the hand in place, plus a slight palm swell to the handle. The knife features two lanyard attachment points, one in the blade and another at the butt of the handle.

The knife is very light overall, and feels quick and maneuverable. It's comfortable to use for long periods of time, feeling very natural in the hand. The balance is right where I place my index finger, just behind the forward guard.

During prolonged, heavy slicing when not wearing gloves, the handle texture can potentially become uncomfortable. In my real world use this never became an issue, but in unusual cutting circumstances it might.



Sharpening



The knife could shave from factory, but was not cleanly popping arm hairs or whittling individual hairs like my ZDP Endura and SE H1 Spyderhawk could. I touched the edge up on some Spyderco fine stones using the sharpmaker and the edge improved some. After trying the knife out on various materials I decided it should be reprofiled, which is what I do to pretty much every knife I use. After grinding off the factory edge and putting on a thin, polished edge, the knife achieved the upper levels of sharpness much more easily for me.

I currently have the knife at roughly 10 degrees per side with a 15 degree per side microbevel, which has been working well for me. I feel it could be thinner for certain tasks, particularly slicing cardboard and cutting foods, but this is thin enough to efficienctly cut while standing up to rough batoning without receiving edge damage.

The H1 steel grinds very easily, in between AUS8 and VG10. This makes reprofiling the knife or touching up the edge a very quick process. One of my favorite attributes of the steel is that when you push it too hard, the edge will roll or get small flat spots, but I've yet to make it chip or fracture in any way. This makes touch ups very quick, as I can sharpen out the edge damage using the sharpmaker at 15 degrees with the fine stones in just a few swipes per side.

The steel is slightly more prone to developing a burr during sharpening than some other steels I frequently sharpen, like SR101, S30V and CPMD2. It takes a bit more care and a light hand for me to get the edge hair whittling sharp, but it's not so bad that I find it frustrating or troublesome. Once moving past 1,000 grit it's much tougher to raise a burr noticeable to the naked eye.​

Continued below...
 
Cutting Performance

Please note that the impressions detailed in this section were from after I reprofiled the edge.

The Aqua Salt works pretty well as a utility knife. To me, the optimum utility blade is something more like the Spyderco Swick, with extra blade length getting in the way at times.

Slicing plastics the knife did well. On thin stretch film plastics the sharp blade sailed right through. On thick plastics geometry comes into play more. The knife easily cut through plastic juice jugs, thick nylon straps, water bottles and other similar items.

Cutting cardboard The knife did very well with the reprofiled edge. Very little effort was required, and no binding issues were noted despite the saber grind. Slicing cardboard in particular made me realize how much the edge retention of the knife has improved over the year its been used.

The Aqua Salt works very well in the kitchen. It's one of my favorite knives to use for cutting up food aside from my actual kitchen knives, because the blade shape is perfect and the steel is rust proof. Here the knife would benefit from a thinner edge and full flat grind, but it gets the job done.

On thick, rigid fruits and vegetables it can sometimes cause them to split rather than be cut. For example in the video you can see it splits the apple in half, but when quartering the halves it did much better. Cutting carrots it would cut much more than split, though towards the thick part there would still be occasional splitting in the last 1/3 of the carrot slice. Onions, bell peppers, various breads, frozen and thawed meats it all handled very well. As long as the edge is sharp cutting any of these foods is quite easy.




The Aqua Salt also makes a good knife for the field. With the thin edge it carves wood efficiently, making traps or pointed sticks with ease. This curls from dry, seasoned wood will easily take flame from a lighter, while the knife can be held perpendicular to a stick and scrape wood dust off for igniting with a fire steel. The handle design of the knife works really well here because the cutting edge comes right up to the handle, which provides excellent leverage for whittling.



I was curious as to how H1 steel would throw sparks from a firesteel, and as you can see in the video using the spine it does well. Sharpening the spine some would produce a more true corner, which would throw better sparks.

The knife also stood up to aggressive batoning, and was used to pry wood from standing dead trees to use as kindling. The edge held up to all of this use with the only noted edge damage being some minor blunting of the edge after going through some frozen, knotty maple wood. The edge was slightly rolled in some spots, but still sharp and usable. When prying the wood the blade would sometimes flex if I used heavy pressure, but it never took a set and the tip remained fully intact.



Here is a poorly shot video showing the Aqua Salt in action. In it you will see it prying wood, cutting wood, hacking briars, showing you it's highly limited chopping abilities, preparing a stir-fry and slicing cardboard.


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Summary

The Spyderco Aqua Salt is an excellent package. The knife and sheath are both very high quality, and can be employed in a variety of ways. The rust proof nature of the knife makes it particularly well suited to marine environments or any other usage where corrosion is a major concern. The blade is robust enough to handle very rough use, while the aggressively textured handle ensures a solid grip when using the knife.​
 
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Nicely organized with some good pics. Thanks.
I've been thinking about picking up a yellow one as a kayak blade and a black one for the woods.
I'm already a fan of H1.
 
If a fellow wanted to choose one fixed blade that would be used in all possible conditions, he could do far worse than the Aqua Salt. It has a lot to recommend it.

Nice review, by the way. Well done.
 
Very well thought out and planned review. Thank you.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems if I'm not careful I can dull the edge taking it out and putting it in the sheath by unintentionally allowing the edge to drag/press against the hard Sheath. Now I consciously try to keep the spine pressed against the sheath instead. I don't know how big an issue this is with others or if this is common with other knives too.
 
vivi excellent review, i hope members appreciate the time & effort it requires to do such a documentary.i do'nt understand what makes this alloy cut. went to gators knife interactive steel chart & found several interesting facts about h1. very high nickel & silicon content, carbon was only .15 % .going into further info on alloy i ran into too much calculas & phyhics for a novice to grasp. more tecky members with engineering backgrounds may be able to explain to persons as myself the principles of the dynamics.thanks for your effort, this is certainly great for salt water use.
 
Loved the review - the youtube vid was pretty interesting when you were working the different types of food. The music in the video however, kinda creepy... :/
 
Thanks for all the kind feedback. If anyone has anything else they'd like to see, like me cutting a certain object with the knife, or comparing it to other knives, let me know.

cgmblade said:
Very well thought out and planned review. Thank you.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems if I'm not careful I can dull the edge taking it out and putting it in the sheath by unintentionally allowing the edge to drag/press against the hard Sheath. Now I consciously try to keep the spine pressed against the sheath instead. I don't know how big an issue this is with others or if this is common with other knives too.
Click to expand...

I noticed that happening some too. Not sure why it seems more noticeable on this knife than others, maybe it's the steel, maybe it's the FRN sheath...maybe Sal knows?

KiloGolf92 said:
Loved the review - the youtube vid was pretty interesting when you were working the different types of food. The music in the video however, kinda creepy... :/
Click to expand...

What, you don't like Om? :D
 
DennisStrickland said:
vivi excellent review, i hope members appreciate the time & effort it requires to do such a documentary.i do'nt understand what makes this alloy cut. went to gators knife interactive steel chart & found several interesting facts about h1. very high nickel & silicon content, carbon was only .15 % .going into further info on alloy i ran into too much calculas & phyhics for a novice to grasp. more tecky members with engineering backgrounds may be able to explain to persons as myself the principles of the dynamics.thanks for your effort, this is certainly great for salt water use.
Click to expand...

The nitrogen is the magic in the mix, (I think) both in terms of corrosion resistance and cutting ability. I think it forms nitrides (the N acting like the C in carbides) which perform the came function as carbides in conventional steel.

Have you seen the ammo reloading dies that are nitride coated so you don't need to use case lube? Before the nitride coating was popularized you had to either use a tungsten carbide ring insert to accomplish the same thing or use hardened steel with a lube. I think the same thing is happening in the blade steel with the addition of the nitrogen.

Of course, I could be totally wrong.
 
Great review.

Vivi said:
What, you don't like Om? :D
Click to expand...

I think that music goes perfect with the video...especially the cutting up of the veggies and the chicken.

But what is the name of the song?

Nevermind - I got it...At Giza, Pt 1

Thanks again for the great review.
 
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very nice review, I am considering getting one of these as a woods knife and this exposure is only helping haha.

-Alex
 
just got back to this fantastic review & was once again impressed with the thoroughness of the effort thanks to elkins for info on the nitrogen in the alloy . i have'nt reloaded in a long time but i remember the tungsten sizing dies. so if they are using nitrogen in dies so we do'nt need the lube this means nitrogen certainly is a big factor in increasing wear & reducing friction while squashing brass cases.
 
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