Unusable Wood Grain ???

Fair enough. You might be right there.

 

I think you're overthinking this. Quartersawn wood is commonly used on knife handles bocote, ironwood, and various oaks being some of the most common I see.
You don't have anything to worry about if it's dry it's ready to work.

 

Seriously you guys are way, WAY overthinking this.

As long as you arent using endgrain, i promise you are fine.

The pieces of wood used in knife making are small, and the amount of warp along a flat sawn face vs a quartersawn face in wood this size that has been properly dried is nothing.

There is zero downside to using flat sawn or quartersawn or rift sawn grain for your knife handle, i promise it wont effect preformance. Just dont use endgrain and only use seasoned wood

 

Overthinking? In Shoptalk? Say what?

 

^LOL

 

Unless you are using a wood like hickory with a interlocking grain there isn't a large difference in splitting potential between flat and quarter sawn wood. @Greenberg Woods can probably tell you how much the wood is interlocked. If you want details about what kind of bending a wood can take the Traditional Bowiers Bibles goes into a lot of depth. Think of it as similar testing to what @Larrin did. The basic way to think of wood is like a bundle of strings or straws. Every season puts on a different color that has its own properties. So if you are looking for maximum strength you have to go to a ring or sapwood or heartwood the direction that the wood is split doesn't make a lot of difference. The only thing that makes a big difference is when that long grain is cut. That's why end grain is a problem. If you have figure in your wood then some has been severed so it comes down to how much is to much. A wood bow ask for more strength than any other wood object that I can think of and it can sometimes take some grain violation. A knife handle can take a lot. The one advantage to quarter sawn wood is that it warps less and is less likely to cause growth and shrinkage problems.

Is this what you were asking our did I just take it in a different direction but still the wrong one?

 

Like it’s been said no real difference in strength in flat or plain sawn lumber and quarter sawn lumber when it comes to breaking with the grain, warping is another issue, most woods on average will shrink/swell twice as much tangentially compared to radially. This means a flat saw board or scales will move more along the width which can leave the tang exposed when wood shrinks or swells compared to a quarter sawn board that will move more in thickness at a lower rate. On a block like that assuming you aren’t trying to pick the prettiest side I would cut the scales like Weo showed in the yellow section to give the most stable scales. As an example with bocote based off wood movement data you could make an educated guess that on a 1” wide section of handle cut flat sawn it could move up to .074” so over a 1/16” a quarter saw piece the same width would only have an estimated movement of up to .04” so just over 1/32” and as a fun fact the human finger can decent down to 13 nanometers of a difference in a surface, 1/32 is 793750 nanometers.

 

IMHO once you glue it on with epoxy on a (full) steel tang the strength wouldn't matter that much, even if it's was the weakest of all woods you could think off.

Hardness (as in not prone to scratching/nicking), workability (how does it grind and polish, will it crack easily if mistreated) and looks is what I am looking at.