Now that it’s a new year, I’m starting to rethink my every day carry knife. While I’m loving my SOG SlimJim, I was gifted a Spyderco Ladybug 3 Hawkbill Salt. Yes, it was on my list for Santa and Santa pulled through. Ladybug is a cute knife. Yes, I know I should use words like cute to describe a knife. Let’s say it’s masterfully built. Let’s start with the Salt part. The Spyderco Salt series are special knives made to be water-friendly. It has a nitrogen-based blade alloy rather than carbon-based like most knives. This nitrogen-based alloy makes this blade 100% rust proof. Being from an island, I always worry about rusty blades.
You can get this salt series in various sizes, blade shapes and from serrated to not. In my case, I was really looking for that emergency blade…the blade to use when the primary blade fails. As a side note, I don’t think my primary blades will fail. So I needed something small and fierce. That’s why I wanted the Ladybug version. The next step up is the Manbug, Dragonfly and then the Tasman. You’ll see things out there for the Pacific and Atlantic but I believe they are the same size as the Tasman. Now for the blade options. Spyderco has various blade shapes that may or may not have serrations.
For me, I was trying to think about what blade shape don’t I have and it pretty much came down to not having a hawkbill to want a hawkbill. Again, I was looking for an emergency knife. My train of thought was that the Ladybug Hawkbill will be small enough to carry with a carabineer and the hawkbill with serrations would be the best to cut rope. I’m not sure why I put emergency and cutting rope in the same category but I guess it works out in my head.
For those of you interested in the Spyderco Ladybug, go in knowing that it is small. I mean, really small. While there is the traditional Spyderco hole in the blade, I find it difficult to open with one hand…more like I’m scared to open it using one hand.
I carried this knife for the past 5 weeks and used it more than I expected. I’m going to use this as my EDC for at least 2 more months. As of right now, it is doing the job and I can’t complain about functionality and sharpness. At the same time, I’m not worried about rust at all which makes for less knife maintenance. Yes, you should maintain your knives. Let me know if you have a Spyderco Salt series and how much you enjoy it!
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