I got my first mule yesterday. I was more excited about how big the spyderco box is than the knife itself :D .
I started to make the handle this morning but now I'm having second thoughts on a different material.
The first one is dyed, stabilized camel bone, the second is dyed and stabilized lacewood. The third is double-dyed box elder burl, I don't remember the colors exactly, I think blue and orange. My favorite stabilized wood source is Jim at staburlsales.com...his stuff is very high quality and priced better than anyone else I can find. He mainly just works with box elder burl but sometimes maple burl and others show up on his website. You can bring his wood to a really high shine with a buffer. Occasionally some nice stabilized pieces come up on ebay as well but you have to get good at digging for the good pieces.
Very nice. Iam not usually a fan of the dymond wood, but that one looks great. How thick were those scales when you started? 1/4" or 3/8"
Thanks, Hector. They all started out at 3/8". I made a lot of sawdust... :D
One thing that was positively fun with the dymondwood was that the contours of the scales is really easy to keep track of - it's like working with a topo map where you can judge terrain from the contour lines! :spyder:
Tsukamaki Mule. This is my first attempt at doing the tsukamaki on a mule and my 4th time actually doing a tsukamaki wrap. I have some ray skin too that i plan to incorporate with it. I'm doing the second version of it as i type.
Second attempt: This time i wrapped the whole handle once with paracord then did one side with rayskin and one just the cord. This still isn't the final product just ideas i'm tossing around.
This last pic shows what happens when you cut dry, hard, ray skin with a 9Cr mule
Here is my dyed & stabilized Massur Birch burl MT05. It doesn't show in the pics but I used black spacer material. Scales are really beefy so my hands won't tire too easily.
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:spyder::D:D:spyder: D'fly PE - D'fly SE - S.P.O.T. PE - '09 Swick - Caly 3 SE - Native DLC SE - Manix 2 SE - Tasman Salt SE - Saver Salt SE - Dodo SE - MT05P - Centofonte 3 - Yin/Yang - Baby Goddard - MT06P -
Swick 2 - '09 Meercat - Superhawk - C101GPBL2 Blue Manix 2 :spyder::D:D:spyder:
"I will have my article about the Halpern Titanium G-10 grips, available tomorrow."
Thanks! Am curious why they seem a bit "short" all whe way around?
Looking at the bottom two in your pic.
Was all set to order a couple, but am holding off for more info.
Marion David Poff wrote:: )
I will have my article about the Halpern Titanium G-10 grips, available tomorrow.
MCM wrote:"I will have my article about the Halpern Titanium G-10 grips, available tomorrow."
Thanks! Am curious why they seem a bit "short" all whe way around?
Looking at the bottom two in your pic.
Was all set to order a couple, but am holding off for more info.
Halpern Titanium Grips for the Spyderco Mule Team Knives...
Here are a few that I've done recently. I still have about 8 more to do of the Chinese Mules...Christmas came faster than I thought.
The little "skinner Mule" was fun. I had the piece of wood that was beautiful, but was too small to fit the handle as is. So I modified the handle...and then the blade.
The black G-10 Mule with the single 3/8" tube and modified blade is my current beater. The blade itself came with a bit of a rounded off tip compared to the others, so I figured I'd modify it to my liking.
The sheaths were made by a friend in Oregon and really turned out nice. There's something about a nice wood handle in a good leather sheath. To me, the G-10 handles look better in Kydex, but not the wood.