Spyderco’s MT17 is the seventeenth installment in Spyderco’s Mule Team Project. It is made from K390 steel produced by the Böhler steel company, headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

K390 is a powdered metallurgy, cold work tool steel with 9% vanadium and added tungsten and cobalt for excellent wear resistance and high compressive strength that is a workhorse in even the most severe applications.

The carbides in the K390 mix are fine in textured and the steel’s remaining components are uniformly sized and distributed evenly throughout the matrix. This equal distribution of elements adds to the overall strength and cutting capacity when the blade is finished and sharpened.

The Mule Team Series is an ongoing project in which Spyderco re-purposes the same fixed blade knife pattern, but releases it in a unique and different blade steel variation several times per year. A Mule is the term given to a test piece in the knife manufacturing process. The project allows steel-obsessed knife knuts the opportunity to test, try and use blades made with steel not readily available in the cutlery industry.

The MT17 Böhler K390 Mule is a limited-number run. It comes with a sharpened PlainEdge cutting edge and does not have handle scales or a carry sheath. The unfinished handle allows customers the option of designing their own personalized scales (or paracord wrap) and sheath and leaves the door open for the knife to be a true customized blade, reflecting the owner’s taste and preferences.