Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

A place to share your experience with our Mule Team knives.
User avatar
PStone
Member
Posts: 2470
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:31 pm
Location: Illinois

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#61

Post by PStone »

RustyIron wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:23 am
...
Very nice write up! :spyder:

And awesome pic of that edge too! What scope are you using? I’d love something like that.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2373
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#62

Post by RustyIron »

PStone wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 2:59 pm

And awesome pic of that edge too! What scope are you using? I’d love something like that.
The microscope is a Plugable USB Microscope, available for forty bucks off Amazon. It's a fun gadget to play with.

Another interesting observation with the SPY27:

I'd been using EdgePro Diamond Matrix stones and wasn't getting the edge I wanted. I use them exclusively on REX45, Maxamet, and K390. But on the SPY27, very apex was rough. At first thought it was just a flaw in my technique, or perhaps I was just being impatient. That could very well could be the case, but I don't think so. I'd go back and start over, but still end up with roughness at the apex. You can really SEE stuff like that with the cheap little microscope. It was weird. So I set aside the diamond matrix stones and went to synthetic Nubatama Bamboo stones. I took it to 8k and then 1μ on the strop. The results were very nice.

I haven't yet used the new edge on anything interesting. I'll run it through it's paces on some bushes, and next time around sharpen it with coarse Nubatama's. If I don't get all this playing out of my system soon, our yard will soon be the the best cared for in the 'hood.
Pokey
Member
Posts: 1208
Joined: Fri May 08, 2020 1:11 pm
Location: Thornton, Colorado

Ladies And Gentlemen We Have A Slicer

#63

Post by Pokey »

I took my SPY27 Mule out of the box just today and put the black G-10 scales on it. One of the things that really caught my eye, ( ;) no pun intended,) was just how high the bevel was on each side, and how relatively fine and even the grind is. I used a Sharpie and the brown Tri-Angles on the Sharpmaker to try to get an idea what angle the grind is at, and to smooth it a little more. It turns out it matches the Tri-Angles on the 30°position, or 15°per side very well. I didn't work too long on it, nor polish it completely. I used the Tri-Angles at the 40° setting to lightly dust off the edge and it looks like this one is going to be a slicer.
Zive
Member
Posts: 276
Joined: Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:16 pm

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#64

Post by Zive »

In the interest of testing the edge stability I dropped the angle on my Mule using a King Neo 800, Shapton glass 2k, and finished on a Shapton glass 6k. No stropping. Final edge angle is 24 degrees inclusive and makes squiggling cuts through phonebook paper quietly. The edge de-burred easily and had a mirror finish off the 6k stone.

So far I’ve only used it to chop vegetables in the kitchen on a wooden cutting board. After chopping onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, ginger, and parsley I cleaned the blade off and inspected it. I wouldn’t expect issues with this light use so no surprise that the edge held up well with no visible blunting or rolling.

In the coming week I’ll get to really test the stability by breaking down cardboard boxes. Will update with how the edge holds up.
User avatar
PStone
Member
Posts: 2470
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:31 pm
Location: Illinois

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#65

Post by PStone »

Great feedback y’all! Lovin it! Definitely a great sharpening steel. Still carrying mine to work daily. But have lazed on the pic taking and reporting. It’s holding up great. It’s been extremely similar to what I experienced with my month of S45vn back when the pm2 sprint dropped. Although I haven’t lost 1/4” of tip.....yet. Mainly just the similar way it takes damage and sharpens up. I can get through a week of my normal usage and have no worries about my edge. I couldn’t say that about vg10, lc200n, or aeb-l. I could definitely say it sharpens comparable to those though. Really enjoying this new steel so much that I’ve already bought the Native and am expecting the para3 delivered tomorrow. :spyder:
User avatar
Cambertree
Member
Posts: 1640
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:48 am
Location: Victoria, Australia

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#66

Post by Cambertree »

So after missing out on the SPY27 Mule in the unexpected scramble, I received an unexpected email from one of the forum regulars asking for my address.

When the mysterious package arrived in Australia from Colorado, not only did it contain a SPY27 Mule, but it came ready to use with G10 scales, the boltaron sheath and an awesome Spydie bandana!

Pokey, your kind and generous gift is very much appreciated! My most treasured knives are the ones I’ve been lucky enough to receive as gifts from people. They have a value to me which far exceeds my other ones, and this Mule will certainly be in that category.

I’m often amazed by the actions of the fine people on this forum, and I’m very touched to be the recipient of such a gracious gesture, myself. :) :cool:

Pokey’s only condition was that I share my experiences in sharpening and using this Mule here on the forum, which I’m very glad to do.

On taking the Mule out of the box, I was immediately struck by what a useful, handy size the blade is. I don’t mind a larger fixed blade for certain tasks, but I think the common bushcrafters’ recommendation of using a blade as long as your hand is wide, is a wise one. It keeps the knife nimble and balanced, and enables you to choke up on the blade, and use pinch grips while having good control of the point and edge.

After fitting the scales, I also appreciated that the design of the handle and blade is very comfortable. I like the arc of the blade belly as well, and how it presents very naturally to the material being cut while the knife is held in a sabre grip with my thumb on the ramp, or on the back of the spine.

I put my calipers on the edge and the behind the edge thickness averaged about 0.023” from three readings.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take an accurate reading of the edge angle, as I was in a hurry to get to work, just after I received the package, and I touched it up with the Sharpmaker to refine the edge. It was between 15 and 20 degrees though, as the 15 dps setting was hitting the shoulder of the edge grind, and the 20 dps setting made a microbevel. I can say most Golden knives I’ve measured come in around the 17 dps mark.

The handle scales are quite comfortable, although they’re undersized on this Mule by a mm or two. This is not uncomfortable in any way though. I considered crowning over the spine as is done on some custom knives, but I think I’ll leave it for the moment in case I happen to fit other scales down the track. I really like the contouring and checkering, which reminds me a bit of a gunstock grip area.

The day after I received the Mule, I put it on my trusty 140 grit Atoma diamond plate to thin it out behind the edge a bit. I usually knock off the shoulders and set a new bevel at about 9 dps and stop just shy of apexing with the coarse diamond plate. Then I go through the 400, 600 and 1200 Atomas to clean up the grind lines. And then onto the 800/1200 Venev OCB resin bonded diamond stone. Then I apply a microbevel with the Sharpmaker brown rods at 15 dps for quick and easy resharpening.

This initial sharpening takes a while, but after that, subsequent resharpenings are very quick - usually less than a minute - and the cutting performance and feel is very much improved.

The fine edge SPY27 takes is very crisp and keen. It feels fairly hard and clean on the stones, if that makes sense.

This is the second SPY27 knife I’ve sharpened, the first being a Para 3 I thinned out quite a bit for a friend. This steel seems like it will perform well with both highly refined and coarser edges.
EE98E68B-EF18-4463-BD87-323618DE74C0.jpeg
This is the knife with some work left to do, blending the grindlines and refining the edge.

I’ve used it in the kitchen a bit, and it’s surprisingly effective, given it’s thicker stock than most dedicated kitchen knives. It slices different firm vegetables well, like carrots and it was no problem taking paper thin, translucent slivers off an onion. It makes fine garnishes out of spring onions/green onions and coriander/cilantro and red Thai birds eye chilli peppers, with no problem. It bites smoothly into soft ripe tomatoes.

I tried it on some dried kombu seaweed while I was making a miso soup. The dried stalks can be surprisingly hard on an edge, so I usually soak them first, but there was no edge damage.

After the food prep for a couple of meals on a hard acacia chopping board, most of the edge was still sharp, but the belly wasn’t quite ‘sticky sharp’. As I like to maintain my knives in this condition, I gave it a couple of passes on the Venev 800, and a few very light passes on the UF rods at 20 dps.

This time I stropped the edge a couple of times on 6 μm and 3μm diamond pasted balsa, and 1 μm and 0.25 μm diamond pasted smoothside leather. I finished wih a couple of passes on a clean roo leather strop. The edge is back to scary sharp - I’m not sure how to quantify it beyond that, but it’s very satisfactory for my purposes.

This weekend I went for a hike along the coast, and I brought the Mule along.

I was wearing it IWB, with Vivi’s paracord loop carry method, but after a while, I found the scales chafed a bit, so I changed to the Southfork and carried the Mule in my backpack front pocket.

The weather was stormy and I ended up getting soaked through, although I still loved every minute of the hike. This meant that I didn’t stop to use the Mule to make a fire in my Bushbuddy stove though, as I had intended to do.

I did take some pics though:
B0C943C2-51C9-4D12-B02D-2430D1A230E3.jpeg
9ECA3DB5-7E90-4A05-B07D-8C657553EDEE.jpeg
EE98E68B-EF18-4463-BD87-323618DE74C0.jpeg
EE98E68B-EF18-4463-BD87-323618DE74C0.jpeg
45BA3187-1606-4E65-9451-9297DB907DEB.jpeg
A55E47AF-7399-4318-92EE-B9BE7605909B.jpeg
I’m looking forward to thinning out this edge a bit more and putting the SPY27 Mule to some more varied uses.

I’m really enjoying both the Mule design and SPY27 so far. :) :cool: :spyder:

Edit: Sorry for the duplicate pics. I deleted and shuffled a couple of the photos around, and it seems to have corrupted the order the photos appear in in the post. :confused:
Attachments
8B7C2FEF-3166-47FA-9DB4-E639DA93EF26.jpeg
User avatar
sal
Member
Posts: 16931
Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:00 pm
Location: Golden, Colorado USA

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#67

Post by sal »

Hi Cambertree,

Thanx for sharing your experience. That's what the purpose of the Mule Team project is all about.

Also, thanx much to Pokey for his generosity. A great spirit to develop in a forum.

sal
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5557
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#68

Post by Bolster »

Great writeup, Camber.

OT: Also thumb-up on your BushBuddy stove. Do you have Ikea in Oz? If so, they have a SS silverware holder for $5 called ORDNING that can be easily modified into a small light wood-burning stove. A fun project. Enjoy your Mule gift!!
User avatar
Cambertree
Member
Posts: 1640
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:48 am
Location: Victoria, Australia

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#69

Post by Cambertree »

sal wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 1:50 pm
Hi Cambertree,

Thanx for sharing your experience. That's what the purpose of the Mule Team project is all about.

Also, thanx much to Pokey for his generosity. A great spirit to develop in a forum.

sal
Thanks Sal, the work you and the Spydiecrew have done to make the MT project available for us to play and tinker with is much appreciated. :cool: :)

Part of my thoughts in continuing to thin out the edge area on mine, is that SPY27 should make an impressive steel for kitchen knives. Maybe a SPY27 Z-Cut sprint run for further experimentation, down the track? :)

I like the edge quality and sharpening response, and fine edge retention of this steel better than S30V. I haven’t used S35VN, so I can’t make any comparisons to that.

I think it would suit an environment where a fine, keen, acute edge is required, and semi regular touchup sharpening is available. :)
Bolster wrote: Great writeup, Camber.

OT: Also thumb-up on your BushBuddy stove. Do you have Ikea in Oz? If so, they have a SS silverware holder for $5 called ORDNING that can be easily modified into a small light wood-burning stove. A fun project. Enjoy your Mule gift!!
Thanks very much Bolster, and cheers for the tip. We sure do have IKEAs in Oz. I checked out that Ordning flatware holder, and it certainly does look useful for a stove project.

I like experimenting with different stoves. I currently have a custom lightweight alcohol stove a friend made for me, a Snowpeak gas burner, and the Bushbuddy UL, which all nest into a Ti Snowpeak 900ml and Ti Snowpeak bowl set, as my backpack setup.

I tend to use the Bushbuddy exclusively as a mini campfire when making short stops while hiking, as I don’t like black, sooty carbonisation on the outside of my pots when they nest into an Exped drybag. :)
114D5A73-3DB1-45B1-979B-81D5D2ECCCCC.jpeg
The fatwood stick was part of another kind gift from a friend from this forum. :cool: :)
Pokey
Member
Posts: 1208
Joined: Fri May 08, 2020 1:11 pm
Location: Thornton, Colorado

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#70

Post by Pokey »

Cambertree,

Wow, looking at the edge you've put on that so far makes me want to spend more time working on refining mine this weekend.

My SPY27 Mule already had a more acute grind angle on the edge compared to my PD1 Mule, right out of the boxes. I devoted more time on the SharpMaker to the PD1 Mule to get its grind angle reprofiled and smoothed so it's closer to the SPY27 Mule. (aiming for 15°) I've gotten pretty close, but the SPY27, even though it still has a lot of the factory scratch pattern on it, feels smoother when it cuts.

The SPY27 Mule will cut into a ripe tomato under the weight of its own blade when I draw the blade across the tomato. The PD1 Mule still tends to squish down on the tomato before cutting. I can only imagine how the SPY27 will do when it has more of a mirror finish like yours.
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5557
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#71

Post by Bolster »

Cambertree wrote:
Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:00 pm
I like experimenting with different stoves. I currently have a custom lightweight alcohol stove a friend made for me, a Snowpeak gas burner, and the Bushbuddy UL, which all nest into a Ti Snowpeak 900ml and Ti Snowpeak bowl set, as my backpack setup.
Fun! I'm way OT here so I'll keep it short: No stove collection is complete without a Zelph Starlyte...! That's what I use in my UL kit; amazing low tech.

Agreed, fantastic looking mule edge there, man.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2373
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#72

Post by RustyIron »

Bolster wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 11:03 am
Fun! I'm way OT here so I'll keep it short: No stove collection is complete without a Zelph Starlyte...
Had to google it--the Starlyte looks kinda neat. For a while I experimented with penny stoves. Mostly it was for my own amusement. The penny stove is really just a chopped up aluminum can that uses alcohol fuel. It's a fun, small, and lightweight. But it doesn't do well once it starts getting cold...somewhere around freezing. So when it gets cold or when it would be a serious inconvenience if the stove got squished, I prefer something more robust with more BTU's.
IMG_4826.JPG
User avatar
Bolster
Member
Posts: 5557
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:27 pm
Location: CalyFRNia

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#73

Post by Bolster »

RustyIron wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:23 pm
Had to google it--the Starlyte looks kinda neat. For a while I experimented with penny stoves. Mostly it was for my own amusement. The penny stove is really just a chopped up aluminum can that uses alcohol fuel. It's a fun, small, and lightweight. But it doesn't do well once it starts getting cold...somewhere around freezing. So when it gets cold or when it would be a serious inconvenience if the stove got squished, I prefer something more robust with more BTU's.

Love stoves almost as much as knives. I hear you re: the alky stoves in cold weather, though. Cutting and boiling, both very important outdoor skills!!
Team Sick
Member
Posts: 184
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:38 pm
Location: Syracuse, New York

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#74

Post by Team Sick »

Used my MTSPY27 in the Adirondacks to make feather sticks. (Unable to attach photo. Says it's file is too large and I was unable to make it smaller.) The knife performed great, better than the operator. Made two feather sticks and then easily stropped back to hair shaving sharp. Going to try and get the MT31 and compare the two steels with the same blade profile.
User avatar
RustyIron
Member
Posts: 2373
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:01 pm
Location: La Habra, CA
Contact:

Anyone still care about SPY27 Mules?

#75

Post by RustyIron »

Yeah, it's an old thread, but I recently repurposed the SPY27 Mule and am having fun with it.

After finishing the Z-Wear PM Mule, I had to figure out what to do with the SPY27. My favorite kitchen knife is a Zwilling Henckels that's both narrow, long, and thin. I generally don't like using short knives. Even so, I consigned the SPY27 Mule to the kitchen.

After several weeks of use, I''m really happy with the way this knife is performing. It's still so sharp that I'm not feeling compelled to sharpen it yet. The Henckels would still be usable at this point, but it would be to the point where it night not push cut through tomatoes or onions. The SPY27 is doing fine.

The conclusion is SPY27 is far superior to the noname stainless that Henckels was using 40+ years ago. I like my existing kitchen knives and have no intention of getting rid of them, but now I'm curious if I'd prefer a knife made with some higher-end materials. Could the grass actually be greener?
User avatar
Woodpuppy
Member
Posts: 3700
Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2018 6:38 pm
Location: Florida

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#76

Post by Woodpuppy »

Absolutely. The only reason I don’t have higher end kitchen knives is cost, yet I use two of them more than any other knife in my possession. 🧐
BLUETYPEII
Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:02 pm
Location: Mesa Arizona USA Earth

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#77

Post by BLUETYPEII »

I was lucky and was able to get a Spy27 Mule right when they came out. I’ve carried it almost every day since. I don’t use it every day but it does get a lot of use cutting nylon straps and general utility stuff. I haven’t felt a need to sharpen it until just recently.

If the edge is right between 30° and 40°, What angle do y’all think I should sharpen it to?
40 Spyderco knives in 11 different steels,
1 Byrd and 30 “others”
User avatar
Ramonade
Member
Posts: 3037
Joined: Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:45 pm
Location: NE France

Re: Spy27 Mule in use and testing feedback

#78

Post by Ramonade »

Well, you have two choices ! Either spend some time to reprofile to 30 and have a bit better edge retention, or microbevel at 40 and the microbevel will slowly take the whole bevel.

I said this because you seem to use the Sharpmaker. If you also sharpen freehand well you could match the actual angles easily, and if you have a fixed angle system 17% is often a good spot to sharpen Spyderco factory edges without having to do any kind of heavy reprofiling job !
:respect In the collection :respect : Lots of different steels, in lots of different (and same) Spydercos.

Robin. Finally made an IG : ramo_knives

MNOSD member 004* aka Mr. N5s :face-clouds
Post Reply