handle material preferences?

Lignum vitae has a LOT going on. We sometimes get stuck thinking about one particular thing as important. Such as the "figure scale"- we've gotten to a point where it's common to have all woods judged solely on the amount of crazy quilt lines you can bring out.

With lignum vitae you have a raltively unpredictable "camo", a herringbone like grain pattern, and a feel in the hand that is just amazing. It's very pretty stuff, but may be too subtle.

Osage is.... not as pretty as lignum vitae- I haven't ever found a piece with "exhibition grade" crazy quilting, I wortk very plain jane osage. It's just durable, ages well, SHOWS its age well, and take flame markings handily :)

Interestingly, while micarta is durable, not prone to much shrinkage, and uniform. I HAVE broken it, and it is easier to crack than many woods. I do like it for hollowing out spaces in handles, though.
 
I love wood, cocobolo is my favorite. I grew up working with wood and still to this day, I play around with it.

That being said, most of my user knives have some kind of micarta or G-10.

I love not having to worry about it.
 
koyote said:
With lignum vitae you have a raltively unpredictable "camo", a herringbone like grain pattern, and a feel in the hand that is just amazing. It's very pretty stuff, but may be too subtle.
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I too love that particular figure. It shows up when the grain is vertical or perpendicular to the face of the board. It's formed because of interlocking grain as the tree grows. Cool stuff. It'll shrug off water from now until eternity.

Question: how does it react to the glue you use? It's so oily that I'd be a bit concerned with it adhering over the long haul.
 
Jeff H said:
Doc,
I think that the "Ivory" Micarta has a paper substrate. Looks even classier than the linens but I still like Canvas even for looks because of the "depth" you get when you sand to 600 grit and buff lightly- especially on the "Natural."
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Thanks Jeff.

Doc
 
I like some of the micarta options but I prefer wood.

I don't think wood can be beat as far as aesthetics are concerned. But stag and stacked leather can look great on the right knife.

While burls are pretty they can be fragile even if stabilized. I have worked with burls that have lots of hidden voids that when filled with resin look nasty. Super dense woods like bocote, lignum vitae, osage, wenge, bloodwood and purpleheart are some of my favorites. Some of the softer woods like maple and walnut give you beautiful handles as long as they are treated properly.

Lignum vitae can have some cool figure and contrast to it.

IMG_5976.jpg
 
PB Wilson said:
I too love that particular figure. It shows up when the grain is vertical or perpendicular to the face of the board. It's formed because of interlocking grain as the tree grows. Cool stuff. It'll shrug off water from now until eternity.

Question: how does it react to the glue you use? It's so oily that I'd be a bit concerned with it adhering over the long haul.
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I use several very oily woods regularly- cocobolo, ipe, recently using more lignum vitae. I "stipple" the inside of scales with a drill bit, I do a lot of peened pins (not always but often) and I use either a strong slow cure epoxy or loctite 330, which seems to glue ANYTHING very well.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly (see the glue wars thread from way back when), I've had excellent results with gorilla glue on very dry woods. Like, leave them out in the sun in summer here at 34% humidity dry. Then wet the glued surface well and clamp HARD. To be fair, I've ALWAYS done peened pins on knives I gorilla glue, and I work the pins AFTEr the glue up- so that the holes are all there but nothing is in them. The pins are completely independent of any adhesive bond that way. I don't do many gorilla glue handles because the general attitude towards water curing poly adhesives is poor (uninformed, IMO).

Be interesting to take some LV and ipe scraps and do a test with the three adhesives, though.
 
Thanks for the response regarding the glue. I haven't used loctite 330, only West Systems epoxy with very good results (just not with lignum vitae).

Interesting stuff about Gorilla glue. I think it got such a bad rap due to being so popular. With many, many people using it and not always taking care to follow the directions to the letter, there were bound to be reports of it not working well. A guitar maker friend uses poly glues a lot and he also reports that tight clamps and longer clamp times have helped a great deal.

Thanks again and keep on making your very cool knives!
 
I prefer wood, I like osage the best. I also like bamboo, bocote, zebrawood, bloodwood, and curly maple among others.

Micarta definatly has a place in my stable too. It depends on what im lookin at as far as knife use and look.
 
Natural materials! I dislike synthetics.

curly birch, maple burl, Ironwood, etc. Antler, leather.

To be honest after making and handling my first leather handled knife, I think it is fast becoming one of my favorite handle materials.
 
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