Toughest Wood for Scales/Handle?

Planterz said:
I don't know if it's the "toughest", but ebony or other blackwood is always a good choice. Looks great, and since it's already dark/black, it won't show stains like other woods might. And it's pretty damn tough. Bog oak too, since it's already been stained for hundreds if not thousands of years.
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Bog oak and ebony are my most beloved woods. Not sure if they are the "toughest ever", as the OP asks for. As scales for a folder or scales for a full tang fixed blade do not suffer such a great deal of mechanical stress, the concern may not be that relevant. A hidden tang construction, on the other hand, would rely way more on the mechanical resilience of the handle material.
 
Lignum Vitae is the hardest wood, but it might be difficult to work with. I prefer black Ebony and when polished is stunning.
 
The tough woods are generally a bitch to work with. In addition, some exotic woods are saturated with oils quite agressive for your nose, throat and lungs. Not speaking of the dust... Polishing oak is a pain of its own. To be honest, sanding any wood is a pain. Not to be compared with the stink of sanding horn or stag... Just don't think "modern" materials are "safe"... They aren't, they are probably worse. So, yeah, I'm back to sanding steel (which is no better for the lungs, for sure...)
 
I've rescaled knives with Lignum vitae, osage orange, ipe, and ebony (not sure what variety, but it is pure black, no streaks). They all are great. The lignum vitae I used has the edge grain exposed as the main surface. It has a nice chatoyance much like a tiger's eye gem stone. I have also had some pieces of osage orange that display some chatoyance.

Another obscure wood that seems very durable is the heart wood from a manzanita bush. In my pre knife days I made a key fob with an inlaid cross (I was in high school). Gave it to my wife before we got married and it has been on her key ring ever since. No dents in it, just a few scratches in the varnish. We are celebrating out 38th anniversary today.


To add to BERT2368's comments:

Cocobolo is in the poison ivy family. Be careful with it, dust and splinters can be nasty. My skin will react to is a little if i handle it a lot.

Lignum vitae. I found that roughing up the surfaces to be glued (epoxied) with rough sand paper really makes a difference. Also use the slow are JB Weld. My daughter has a cross necklace that she wears 24-7, so it gets washed in the shower regularly. I little wax or mineral oil ever several months makes it shine again.

Ipe. Nice poorman's substitute for lignum vitae. The grain pattern pretty boring compared to the real stuff. I picked some up at a recycled building materials place as decking scraps.
 
herisson said:
American hickory sure stands tall among the toughest woods. Had hammers of different weights handled in hickory. Put them to hell and back on many construction sites. Never failed.
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so you agree with what I wrote. good to know.

speaking of.....I wrote that almost 4 years ago. surprised this old thread inspired someone to start back up on.
 
I agree and I'm of the slow kind. Apologies... This said, the "toughest" , "baddest", "strongest" requests tend to get my goat...
 
Years ago I helped my daughter with a science project when she was in elementary school. The focus was wood hardness. I live near many businesses in the yacht industry and was able to get free scraps of various hardwoods for the experiment. Ipe was one of the samples. I made a rig that allowed a hammer to be dropped on the nail and ensured the same amount of force was used for each hammer blow. We then counted the number of blows it took to drive the nail a certain depth. Ipe was by far the most difficult to drive a nail through and I don't believe we were able to get a nail very deep without it bending. It's also an extremely heavy wood. I'd love a knife handled in it.
 
Phydeaux said:
Cocobolo is in the poison ivy family. Be careful with it, dust and splinters can be nasty. My skin will react to is a little if i handle it a lot.
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Cocobolo is not related to poison ivy. It is a rosewood (dalbergia). But the oils in cocobolo induce an allergic reaction in some people.

Toughest, along with lignum vitae, would include verawood, also know as argentine lignum vitae, which has physical properties that are similar to true lignum, and looks similar, too.
 
I have seen in Ecuador lignum vitae (guayacan) growing in the same area as cocobolo. I like them both. However, for knife scales it is very important for the wood to be dried properly, otherwise you won’t get it’s full potential.
 
I've got a chunk of a wood called "axe breaker" in Spanish- red quebracho, It is supposed to be even harder than lignum vitae, the couple of cuts I have made in it and the slowness with which it sands or drills suggest that the numbers on wood database are correct... It's extremely dense and loaded with tannins instead of oily/waxy stuff like lignum vitae or the dalbergias. I tried treating a sample with Iron acetate solution made from vinegar and steel wool as is done to darken oak and other woods with a tannin content, never seen a piece of wood turn so black so fast, it looked like ebony in a few seconds.

I intended to try using it for ferules on Japanese style wa handled kitchen knives, but the stuff is so hard to work and sands so slowly I expect that nearly any other wood adjoining it might get sanded to below the level of the quebracho instead of evening the two out.

https://www.wood-database.com/quebracho/
 
For readily available stuff I like walnut, osage, and maple. Preferably figured and with some flames.
There's a reason they use maple for bowling alleys.
Yellowheart and purpleheart seem hard and would probably work too.
 
Riz! said:
Lignum Vitae.

Its considered to be the most dense and the hardest wood there is. It used to be used as propeller shaft bearings in old ships and submarines! Resists water rot and insects extremely well

http://www.wood-database.com/lignum-vitae/

http://www.core77.com/posts/25224/l...earings-for-nuclear-submarines-and-more-25224
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We found some shaft bearings of L.G. in a hundred year old water powered electric plant for an old factory building being restored in Ct on the Pootatuck River. (love that name)
The contractor somehow found someone to make more and the plant makes power today. It's condos now.
Hop hornbeam and mesquite are very hard also. I've seen mesquite throw sparks off a chain saw when cut.
 
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I have used Oak & Osage , I have some Dogwood that is going to make a nice handle some day. Locust would also be good.
 
herisson said:
The tough woods are generally a bitch to work with. In addition, some exotic woods are saturated with oils quite agressive for your nose, throat and lungs. Not speaking of the dust... Polishing oak is a pain of its own. To be honest, sanding any wood is a pain. Not to be compared with the stink of sanding horn or stag... Just don't think "modern" materials are "safe"... They aren't, they are probably worse. So, yeah, I'm back to sanding steel (which is no better for the lungs, for sure...)
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Sanding anything and dust of any kind can be bad for the lungs. It's an interesting topic, and curious how some people have been fine sanding different things for years and others develop issues more quickly. Exactly what it is, the size and shape of the particulants, the particular lungs and lung health of the person, and other factors come into play.

The issue with some woods is chemical. Qualities that make some woods desirable, like pest resistance, also makes them toxic. (Think about it. You're effectively doing something like the wood borers do to that wood.) Sometimes, it is just the dust. Sometimes, it is prolonged skin contact with the oils. For instance, I've seen people get dermatitis from wearing wooden prayer beads. One unfortunate mechanism is sensitization. It might not be an issue the first time or even the first several times, but then you become sensitized. Then you can end up having serious reactions. What's worse is that some sensitizers can sensitize you to other things besides themselves.

General care or basic precautions are a good thing. If it's known to be a problematic material, adjust accordingly.
 
As people have pointed out, Tough/ Hard/ Strong all have different meanings depending on if you are talking mechanically or colloquially.

Toughness in reference to resistance to breaking is relatively unimportant for knifemakers because most of the time, the wood is supported. A tough wood is one that cant be snapped, twisted or bent, but in knife making applications the wood is either glued to a full tang and thus is supported by steel, or is in a hidden tang at which point bending you would probably bend the steel at the base of the tang as the first point of failure.

For hardness, the janka hardness scale is used which measures a woods resistance to having a ball bearing pushed into it, its a good representation of a woods resistance to scratching, scuffing and marking. Most high end exotics are plenty hard for knife making, woods like Cocoboloo, Desert ironwood, African blackwood, most ebonies and the like are gonna be in the range of 2800-3300 pounds on the janka hardness scale.

Lignium Vitae is incredibly hard and dense, but it has a few issues in my opinion that make it less than ideal for knifemaking. First is simply, its not all that pretty. The grain and color tend to be a little dull. Not a deal breaker, but if you want mechanical strength and dont much care about appearance, g-10 or micarta are better bets in my opinion. Its also incredibly difficult to dry properly and can be prone to cracking and checking.

The last factor to mention is the incredible variation within species. Wood is a natural product, and the range of density and hardness can be huge. Poor growing conditions lead to strong wood, I buy walnut harvested from the rocky highlands of Armenia and Azerbaijan and it can be ~20-40% denser and harder than farm grown walnut here in sunny, fertile California.
 
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