- Joined
- Jan 13, 2011
- Messages
- 2,562
Are we over concerned with heart wood and sap wood in handles? Ya probably. But the fact still remains that there is a difference in the sap wood and heart wood of hickory. Do you think we just used the hickory sap wood handles for a couple hundred years because of a myth?
I like it. It certainly is different (sap wood vs. heart wood). Let's not forget the major sponsor responsible for 99% of the arguments made that heartwood is equivalent to sapwood is none other than the US federal government. I can't imagine that such an entity would have ulterior motives (sarcasm alert). That being alleged, when it comes to axes - sapwood is more resilient. Will you have a problem with a heartwood handle? Probably not short of operator error, as Operator stated. Is a handle with both heartwood and sapwood more likely to fail than an all sapwood handle or all heartwood handle? Who gives a shit because we all known that grain runout and grain density are more important anyway.
If you want a text book handle, then search for one that is 100% sapwood, no grain runount, grain orientation perfectly aligned, grain density of no more than 20 rings per inch, and obviously staight, etc. And then, I hope you break it and realize that the operator is ultimately the keystone.