I wanted to share my first attempt at making wood scales for my Z-Wear Mule. First I wanted to thank Xplorer for his great guide for making knife scales. Also a big thank you to Sal and his team for keeping the Mule Team alive, great job. His complete guide can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=89740&hilit=making+a+mule+handle
I wont go over every detail as Xplorer covered it well but I will just highlight my experiences. I ordered a block of red coolibah burl wood for the handle. It came with a large crack in it but I did not want to waste the wood. I sent the wood out the be stabilzed clear by K&G. After I got it back I cut it in half I ended up using black CA glue from Starbond which worked great to fill the crack and add some character.
Once I was able to fill the crack I epoxied black and white 1/32" G10 liners to the scales I got from Jantz then cut the basic shape with my bandsaw. This was my first issue I ran into, the 1/4" blade on my bandsaw was too big to follow the curves of the knife. Next time I will use a 1/8" blade next time which should allow me to follow the pattern easier.
I was able to further shape the handle, add corby bolts and epoxy the scales to the knife. The second main issue I had here was finding the correct depth for the corby bolts. At first I cut them a little too short so I had to make the holes in the handles a bit deeper. But making them deeper did not leave enough of the head sticking out of the handle. You need to sand almost 1/4" off the bolt to hide the screw hole in them. When drilling go shallow and test fit the full size bolts, then adjust from there. You can always drill a little deeper or take a little more off the bolt but you can go back.
My final main issue was having the knife handle being too fat, almost .85" when I attached the rough handles onto the knife. I was able to get it down to .75" at its fattest part which felt pretty good but it took a lot of time to remove that much wood once it was mounted on the knife. Buy calipers, about $30, to measure the wood thickness before you attach it to the knife. It works a lot better than going by feel like I did.
Below is the final knife, again my first attempt at making knife handles but I am pretty happy how they come out. I sanded from 100, 150, 220, 320, 400, 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 and finally 2500. I also buffed the knife with a blue compound. My next scales for my MagnaCut will be out of cherry and now I know a few more tricks, traps to avoid and places to improve on.
Endura AUS-8, Manix 2 S30V, Alcyone BD1N, PM2 Micarta Cruwear, Native 5 Maxamet (2nd), Para 3 Maxamet (2nd), Magnacut Mule, Z-Wear Mule, BBB 15V Manix 2, REC PM3 10V Satin, Dragonfly Salt 2, GB2 M4.
