Spyderco Forums

Hi Bill, Nice job and good tests. Will you cut some citrus? I'd like to know how the steel holds up. sal Hi Sal, Yes, I will be cutting citrus before long. We often make our own orange, lemon, or grapefruit juice at home, just haven't lately. I'll report back when we do. And Gordon, thank you for t...

Both will survive an incredible amount of punishment. G-10 will chip if struck hard, FRN will dent. G-10 will crack if flexed far enough, FRN, while easier to flex, will only bend, then spring back when released. If FRN has a "weakness" it's that it will melt, and even burn, if exposed to...

I have seen pictures of one ZDP laminate blade where the core was broken, but the owner admitted he was prying with the tip. Bad idea. I have a ZDP Endura that I had Tom Krein regrind to 0.010" thick behind the edge bevel, which is a bit thinner than my Caly Jr.s measure. I've worked that one ...

I agree, the first post would make a great sticky, but our hosts here might think it appears too self-serving if they were to do so. Maybe better to have it as a sticky at BladeForums, which is not a retailer of product.

Bill

If Spyderco were ever to sell replacement FRN scales to end users, then white ones would be a good choice for the enthusiasts who want every color. Regular users would not want to dye their own handles, so some other colors than white would probably be a sounder business decision. Just thinking out ...

+1 on the naphtha. It works faster than mineral spirits (lighter fraction) and evaporates more completely, less of a nasty smell. We keep a quart in the house and a gallon in the shop. I have a chemical resistant spray bottle full of naphtha in the shop that is super handy for all sorts of cleanup o...

I agree on the kitchen being a tough environment...any staining or other effects from using on various foods? No staining at all so far. Sharp knives at our home do not go into soakwater with the other dishes - too dangerous for unwary hands, plus it wrecks the edges to collide with the flatware. W...

Hello again, I got the handle scales on my first Mule Team 05. I used cork, epoxy-laminated from 3 layers of 4 mm floor tile, for the scales. For this first effort I simply bandsawed close to the line and trued it up with files after attachment to the tang. Scales are affixed with epoxy thickened wi...

I hope this won't be taken amiss - I just want to caution folks that router tables call for very, very careful use. The damage you can do to yourself makes knives look like children's playthings. In less than a blink of an eye a cutter doing maybe 50k rpm will turn your fingers into vapor and pulp....

Vegetable oil of any kind is a bad idea. It will either get gummy and then go rancid or go rancid and then get gummy. Mineral oil is inexpensive and never goes bad. There are some exceptions to this general rule. Coconut oil, for example, is fully saturated and can be stored for many years at room ...

Sounds like it would only be useful for making removable scales. One inch diameter probably isn't small enough for the smaller radius curves. Gordon A quarter coin is just under an inch in diameter. I just ran a quarter around the tang of a Mule and 1" will sand all the inside corners of the t...

It has been a busy week. I finally sent off the two worst of my warped Mules to W&R after speaking with the nicest man there on the telephone. There has not been time to do my handle scales yet on the two I still have, but I am hoping to do them soon. I want to place one into service as a kitche...

FWIW, all four of the latest version I've received are essentially perfectly straight when checked against an expensive machinists' straightedge. I have not encountered any warped Mules in any of the prior runs either. Sal, thank you for your patience and politeness. Thank you also for what remains...

Because in a production setting, the grinding must be done on both sides simultaneously so as to keep the steel from warping. by hand, alternating sides every few seconds or so, a flat grind is doable, but when you're talking about a production company trying to put out thousands of knives, it's ju...

Well, IIRC, the tip of his worst example was 4.2mm from the table, or about 2.1mm of warping. That's not over just the tang, it's over the whole knife, tip to tang. Over just the tang, we're talking about half of that, or about 1mm. That's roughly what I saw when I put the handle on mine. I had no ...

npueppke wrote: That's not to say that an H1 neck knife wouldn't be really cool. Keep in mind thought that it'd have to be hollow ground, so it would probably be thicker than your average neck knife.

Please educate me. Why does H1 need to be hollow ground?

But, but, but... wouldn't overheating draw the temper and make the edge less brittle? An alternate explanation that makes more sense is that the thin edge gets hardest because it quenches the fastest after heat-treating, and the really hard layer is shallow, so is removed in a few sharpenings. Bill

Are you thinking of sanding it flat the way you do scales of natural wood? That seems like it would be a bear. Epoxy and clamping would, I think, get rid of about half of the tip to tang curvature if it was uniform. Gordon Flattening the tang would be a lot of hand-grinding. I do not trust epoxy to...

As the posts to date demonstrate, there are several sides to the issue, and it is this complexity that caused me to ask the question of the forum. I realized when I placed my order that the mule project is of an experimental nature, but did not realize what were my tolerances for acceptable blade de...

I recently purchased 4 of the 9Cr18Mo mules and today I opened the other 3 to check them out. Of the 4, the first one is the straightest, with the blade tip deviating under 1 mm from centerline. The other 3 are more warped, and I will call CS, but do not want to be a pain about it. How far out is to...