Ebonite is a cool material. It's like what you might expect rubber to be if it were a mineral that came out of the ground, like a rubber rock. It feels hard, much harder feeling than micarta, I think the texturing edges feel sharper in ebonite than in any other handle material CPK offers. But, it's contradictory and also feels soft when you squeeze the handle in a full grip, like it might have some rubber give. Feels more like a mineral than a plastic but kind of similar to a mineral, or plastic, or metal, but not really rubber....yet it does feel like rubber. Mainly in terms of its friction. The friction of it is also confusing. As far as grippiness, ebonite is neck and neck with Terotuf I think, but it's smooth, so if the fuzzy Terotuf is one one end of a smoothness spectrum, ebonite is on the other. It's smooth as can be but your hand sticks to it once you apply any meaningful amount of pressure to your grip. It's nice to have such a confident secure grip that's due to the handle material itself rather than a rough texture. Anyway out of my several ebonite knives I've only used the Medium Chopper. I chopped off a few branches that were above my head and took down some trees along the border of my yard and along a retaining wall, wailed on some dead wood and tried to focus on the handle and how my hand felt. I am certain the ebonite absorbed much of the shock from impact, and it gave superior control over the blade, making me undeservedly accurate. If Terotuf is like velcro hands, ebonite is kind of like tree frog hands I guess. My ebonite is usually wet immediately once I start touching it, because any hand sweat just sits on it, versus micarta, where it immediately absorbs into and darkens it. But even if its all covered in sweat it grips the same. So I have super limited experience in using ebonite handles, but my opinion is it's approximately as good as Terotuf, there are significant tactile differences, ebonite looks really good while Terotuf looks rather ugly, but Terotuf is nigh indestructible while ebonite is mortal.