Spyderco Forums

Lucky guy. Scored a Z-Max Mule.
Halpern Scales.
And, a fire hose.
The hose is 2.5 inches wide single wall, tubular webbing, with some sort of plastic coating inside for water proofing. The walls are 2mm thick.
I held the hose with a pair of pliers and tried to do push cuts from tip to heel of the blade.
From left to right, the first and last slice. I tried to curve the cuts to make the blade cut more fiber and not just slice through the grain.
I totaled 287 cuts. It was easy until 167, around 80 it stopped shaving hair cleanly, 200 it was hanging up on paper. 220 it was not push cutting tip to heel. I adjusted and pushed and pulled, tip to heel and back again and the blade kept going to 280. Around 280ish it started getting hard to cut, and was no longer fun. I tend to test edge life by sticking the edge on my finger nail and trying to push the blade sideways, when it sticks and does not move it is sharp. At 280 it was slipping off my nail with no effort, aka dull.
Meanwhile, nice pile.
This hose was decommissioned and has been tensioned around trees to make a slack line, we have pulled vehicles with it, and generally used it as a kids toy. It is dirty and has been ground into dirt and tree sap. At the time of testing it was gritty and sticky in places.

Sharpening details later.

Eager to hear details! Love that color blue btw.

Yeah I look forward to hearing about your sharpening impressions and method/progressions. And anything else you find out about the Z-Max mule!
Thanks for posting about your test and results. I have a custom Z-Max Fixed blade edc knife and managed to pick up one of these mules, so I’m a little bit into the steel haha
Good stuff from my experience if you like high hardness slicey Knives that cut forever and are a joy to sharpen and strop back excellently you’ll like Z-Max :)

Great test! How did your hand feel after 287 cuts?

Have you done this test with other Mules? I seem to remember another post like this s few months back.

It would be cool to see how different mules stack up to each other on this "real world" usage test.

Great report!
Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the props team.

My hand felt fine after the cutting. I did wear a glove on my plier hand and got some hotspots there, but no problems at all handling the mule. "Real world " usage is fun to say and I have cut webbing and rope in the real world, just never this much. I don't have enough things to cut in my real world 4-6months to dull a Z-Max. I guess it is like forcing a patina on a tool steel blade, forcing edge dullness. Anyway, it was like slicing butter at the start and did require force at the end to make it through the hose.
This is my entire sharpening set up. I started with a sharpie and blackened the edge. I used a back and forth motion on the 300 side, on one side of the Mule, until the ink was gone. Then the other side until the ink was gone. Then, I went to 600 for about 1/2 the time I spent on the 300 side. Then 1000. Then green stropping compound. I do have a loupe and did look at the edge a couple times. I am free-handing and do not like to look closely at my edges since they are not pretty.

I spent 15 min ish, not more than 20 getting the Z-Max Mule back to slicing through paper like it was not there, and shaving arm hair with ease. It was well easier to sharpen than any of my M390, or 20cv blades. It was easy enough to sharpen to make it a pleasure to use.

This is outstanding! Good work bro…glad to see the firehose being used…it’s a phenomenal testing material IMO.