Is this a knife you're going to look at, or use?
Antler is bone and wears about as good as any handle material. There are centuries old knives with stag handles that look great after all this time. Not to mention, it's gorgeous! Even in smaller pieces, like the scales of a 112. There's generally no mistaking stag.
Ironwood is a great handle material as well. Hard enough in fact that it doesn't necessarily need to be stabilized. Unfortunately though, it's not always recognizable as ironwood on smaller pieces.
If I put ironwood scales on a knife, I have the luxury of picking a particular place in the wood to make the scale. I make sure it's recognizable as Ironwood, or I won't use it. I usually start with a block and section it to a thickness that will yield 2 scales (with some cutting and finishing material as well, of course). I can see what both sides will look like before I start so I know how to layout the handle to highlight the characteristics of the wood. Then I'll split that block to "book-match" the pieces so on the belly or spine of the handle the grain is consistent so it looks like its a single piece that was split.
Does anyone know with any certainty that Buck book-matches scales and lays out the pattern to maintain the graining?
If the answer is "no", I'm getting stag.
It's not that you can't get a great set of ironwood scales on a 112; the question is: does Buck's production folk put that much care in it? I'm not suggesting they don't, I'm just don't know their process.
In any case, you'll see the photo of the material in the "build your own" 112 on the site is merely an example of the material used.
That's my $0.02...
