THE RETURN OF THE MULE TEAM™
In knife-industry jargon, a “mule” is a sample knife used for performance testing. Typically, before a knifemaker decides to invest the time, effort, and expense in a particular steel, heat-treatment method, or other special process, he’ll validate the approach by making a mule and putting it through its paces.
Spyderco’s Mule Team Series takes this concept to the next level. Rather than selfishly keeping all the fun in house, we allow our customers to get actively involved in the process. Our Mule Team knives all take the form of the same fixed-blade pattern, but express it in in many different steels. This ongoing project allows steel-obsessed knife enthusiasts a near-turnkey opportunity to experience and evaluate different blade steels using the same identical design platform.
Mule Team blades are just that—full-flat-ground, factory-sharpened blades sold without handles or sheaths. The full-tang handle design includes an integral lower guard and a subtle pinky hook, as well as a variety of pre-drilled holes to accommodate pins, cutler’s bolts, tube-style rivets, and lanyard tubes. The holes also skeletonize the tang to lighten the blade and give it a more weight-forward balance, as well as providing a better gripping surface for epoxy. By offering Mule Team blades in this form, we give our customers the freedom to affix whatever style of handle they prefer and finish it to suit their personal tastes. This approach also helps keep Mule Team blades as affordable as possible.
The simplest and easiest way to haft a Mule Team blade is with the pre-made handle scales available through the Spyderco Factory Outlet and Spyderco.com. Precision machined from solid black G-10 to offer a hand-filling, textured surface, these scales come in a complete kit that includes all the hardware necessary to mount them. They can be installed in a matter of minutes with two T-8 Torx® wrenches and quickly turn your blade into a fully functional knife. In addition to the scale kits we offer, there are also other third-party manufacturers who machine “bolt-on” scales for Mule Team blades.
If you’re handy (or want to learn to be), one simple DIY method of putting a handle on your blade is to wrap it with parachute cord. Called “550 cord” in military circles because of its 550-pound breaking strength, this material was originally used for the lines of military parachutes and was only made in a very limited palette of colors. Now it and its many variants are available in a rainbow of colors ideal for wrapping knife handles or making fobs, bracelets, and other paracord crafts. Wrapping your handle can be as simple or as sophisticated a process as you want it to be, and many different wrap patterns are possible. Wrapping can be done with the full thickness of the cord or, for a thinner, flatter profile, the interior strands can be removed to use only the outer sheath of the cord.
If you’re really ambitious, you might consider making your Mule Team handle from scratch. Many aspiring knifemakers get their start by putting handles on pre-made blades. To them, Mule Team blades are the basis for the ultimate “kit” knife, offering a ready-to-finish blade in a true, high-performance steel. Again, the variety of pre-drilled holes in the tang of a Mule Team blade allows the use of a variety of different types of handle hardware, as well as different pin and bolt placements. Whether you choose wood, synthetic materials, or something even more exotic, mounting a handle to a Mule Team blade is a fun, satisfying project that also allows you to fine-tune the ergonomics of your knife to perfectly fit your hand size.
Put It to the Test
Once you’ve finished your Mule Team blade, you may be tempted to put it on display or tuck it away in the safe for posterity. Resist that urge! The ultimate goal of the Mule Team project is to actually use your knife and evaluate the cutting performance, edge retention, corrosion resistance, and ease of sharpening of its specific steel. Exactly how you do that, however, is entirely up to you.If you are a regular knife user, you probably have a number of everyday cutting chores that are part of your routine—like preparing food in the kitchen, working in your garden, or maybe even processing game in the field. That means you also have a strong baseline of experience as far as how a good knife—and good knife steel—should perform over time. The best way to evaluate the steel of your Mule Team knife is to put it to work on those same cutting tasks and see how it stacks up against your established baseline.
Join the “Mule Team Army™”
No matter how you choose to test your Mule Team blade, once you have used it, sharpened it, and used it some more, you will have developed an informed opinion about the performance of its steel. Please don’t keep that knowledge to yourself. Instead, share your thoughts and experiences with other members of the Spyderco community. The absolute best place to do that is Spyderco’s Internet forum, which now includes a dedicated sub-forum specifically for Mule Team discussions. This is where you and other members of Spyderco’s “Mule Team Army” can meet to discuss tips and tricks for handle and sheath making, sharpening secrets, and similar Mule-related topics. More importantly, you can share your own individual testing protocols and your personal insights into the real-world performance of specific steels. This feedback is invaluable because it gives us visibility on how different steels actually perform for our customers. That information can also have a profound influence on the exotic steels we choose to incorporate into our production knives. While we certainly have our own demanding set of protocols for steel testing, our ultimate goal is always to please our customers. Giving you the opportunity to be involved in the steel testing process through the Mule Team project is a unique and extremely educational way of working toward that goal.
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