You wood experts...

[Expatriated]

I have a Honey Locust tree in my backyard. Not one of those cultivated thornless, ones either. This is one of the full-bore, long thorn numbers. The thorns will go through a leather boot--trust me. Here's a pic of thorns.

Doing some reading, I understand that this wood is nice looking, extremely dense and hard, rot and water resistant and makes good scales and furniture, assuming the woodworker wants to work with it. I guess it is so hard that some don't like to use it cause it's difficult to work?

Here's a LINK I found ranking hardness of different woods.

Anyway, what is the feasibility of me using the wood to have someone make some knife scales? What do I do, hack off a thick limb? Does it have to age, dry out, whatever? Has anyone had any experience with this wood? I've seen some pictures of furniture made out of it and it looks good.

Thanks for any info!

 

[1066vik]

hack a limb, take off the bark, split it lengthwise and paint the ends to limit cracks.
you'll want at least a 3" limb a foot long to be sure there's enough "good" to use after it's dried out.
you can either wait a year or so for it to dry out naturally, or you can make a solar kiln and dry it out in a week. (or put it in the oven at 150 degrees for a day or so)
the downside to natural drying is it takes forever.
the downside to forced drying is it creates internal stresses and can lead to more cracks.

If you have any firewood from a honey locust that was cut & split a year or more ago, it should be pretty good to go. prettiest wood comes from forked sections and burls.

where are you and what knife do you want handles for?

 

[kfgk14]

Sounds like damn good stuff for scales.
I'd do some more research on the way to go about finishing them, smoothing etc.
Wouldn't want to waste good wood, now would we?
If you aren't comfortable making scales, there are probably people who would take the wood and do a professional job of it, if they could have some of the wood for themselves.
This seems like it would make great material for dress/display scales for your ESEE, when you need a pretty knife (think nice patina+nice scales=badass)

 

[Expatriated]

I'm in Indiana.

It'll be for an ESEE. 4 or 3.

I'm DEFINITELY not going to do it myself. If I go with this, I'd like to just send the block to someone to do. I don't know nothing bout carving no wood.

 

[1066vik]

it's not difficult.
check and see if there's a sawmill near you - they might have some kiln dried cutoffs that would work for sale cheap.
Once you find the piece of wood you like, and have it dried, email me. the flat rate box is your friend.
If you are planning on stripping the blade, then making a perfect fit is easy. if you're going to leave the original coating in place, it's still very doable, but not as quick and simple.
here are some osage orange (hedge/bois d'ark) scales I did for a Koster blade using a 4x36 belt sander and a sanding sponge. The pins were birch dowel for contrast.