I thought I would give White oak a try after reading that it was the wood of choice to build the seafaring ships from the 1300s on up to the turn of the 1900s. If it can take all the wear and tear of a saltwater voyage I thought with just a minimum of care it would be great for a knife handle. Put the first ones on about 15 years ago and none have failed yet!
White oak is pretty impervious to water due to the tyloses in the pores.
It has a coarse grain, so you need sharp edges to get the final smooth surface.
On the downside, it is very high in tannins, so it may corrode the carbon steel of the knife tang. You can use a synthetic liner to prevent that.
It is also has less dimensional stability than walnut ( which has tannins too, by the way).
For a beautiful, water resistant, very sturdy and stable handle material, try cocobolo, or at least Indian rosewood. The latter is sold from several species, use the true Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia). Indian rosewood can stink, but the smell goes away with time. In the timber trade Indian rosewood is frequently used to denote a wood from a similar species, Dalbergia sissoo too. Sissoo wood looks similar, but is usually less dense, and I have seen even punky or low grade wood sold as higher grades. The wide color variation in this wood is often accompanied with wide density variations too. In order to get a better grade, look for a wood which appears more uniform both in color and density. This is in contrast to the features preferred in cabinet wood, where “striking”, varable, “pretty“ wood is preferred. If you can select yourself in a woodworking store, look for the heaviest, densest, most uniform examples without knots or checks you can find.
Cocobolo is nicer but might be more expensive. Both are naturally oily woods, so it would be more challenging to apply a finish on them, but not impossible.
Cocobolo was pretty much standard on better working knife handles in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, which attests to its durability.
