Wood or bone

J

jth250

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Jun 27, 2011
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I am trying to decide between bone or wood handles on my next knife. The knife will be used as my edc which one do you all think holds up better over time wood or bone handles. Thanks in advance.
 
You should have no problems with either, but ebony, blackwood and cocobolo are especially resistant to wear.
 
IMO, it just comes down to personal preference. Knives have been made with bone & wood handles for over 100 years. Both materials are plenty durable.
 
It would take a lifetime of carry and use (not abuse) to wear out either. I always pick bone first.
 
For the most part bone, but there are some knives that just look amazing with ebony. I wouldn't be too concerned with the durability of either from what I know of them.
 
Depends on the wood, bone and budget. But everything being everything, I would choose a dense wood like ebony for an EDC user.
 
A couple of other variables apply. Now a days, bone is stabilized with Acrylic. This makes it extremely durable because it is essentially sealed and soaked in plastic. You decide if you want an EDC with a stabilized handle. One of the appeals to me, of Blackwood, Ebony, and Cocobolo, are that they are so dense they do not need stabilizing, although sometimes they are.

I imagine if I was to drop my barehead stabilized bone Charlow, that the handle might be more likely to chip, than if I dropped my Gabon Ebony one. Not sure though, cause I know burnside dropped his Gabon and it did chip.

Here are some ballpark density values
Water has a density of 62 pounds per cubic foot
Acrylic has a density of 74 pounds per cubic foot
African Blackwood has a density of 75 pounds per..
Macassar Ebony 67
Acrylic stabilized Bone will have a density of 74 from the Acrilic part. I don't have data on the density of unstabilized cow shin bone handles.

I personally like smooth handles. Gec offers some very nice options. Im also a big fan of exotic woods, with a personal preference to pure black ebony. Gec is currently using a bunch of Blackwood, which is a very uniquely dense and translucent material. Blackwood is a bit slicker than ebony, in a way that I find disturbing for some reason, maybe it reminds me of plastic..

Im sure you can't go wrong with any of your options, I hope you post a pic of whatever you decide.. even pics of things you're considering would be entertaining.. :-)

sunandsteel said:
I can't make up my mind so I have a little of both.
Click to expand...

I resemble that remark :-), thanks for reminding me that either or questions are best answered with Both!

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I recently sought confirmation from GEC regarding their use of stabilized materials. Apparently I had misunderstood an earlier conversation. GEC informs me that:
"The only thing we use that is stabilized is Primitive Bone. All the rest of our bone is not stabilized nor are most of the woods"

I will be preparing several delicious servings of figurative Crow, no birds will be harmed during my re-education. I apologize if anyone was misled by my earlier posts that claimed all GEC bone is stabilized. At this point I dont even know if the CheChen is stabilized or not. Feel free to just ignore anything I say until I graduate from knife materials 101, sometime next year maybe.
 
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What about the Osage orange wood that GEC is using on the Abilene stockman do any of you have any experience with that wood.
 
....but bone...

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jth250 said:
I am trying to decide between bone or wood handles on my next knife. The knife will be used as my edc which one do you all think holds up better over time wood or bone handles. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Do you already have a knife or knives with one material or the other?

I've found both bone and bone to hold up very well, both in my own experience using new(er) knives and with older knives that have received varying amounts of "care" throughout their histories. That said, bone does seem to have a propensity to crack where wood would likely just dent.

[I usually go with whatever material I haven't gotten most recently, ie, every time I go with bone I get a hankering for wood (usually ebony, although jobillo is a new favorite), and if I've gone with wood, bone's often up next.]

At the end of the day, I believe my preference is bone, but more as a matter of aesthetics than because it wears better than wood. For me, it truly does depend on the specific cover treatment on a specific knife.

As long as you go with a reliable manufacturer/creator, either material should hold up well for your every day use.

Good luck!

~ P.
 
I really love them both! I love wood and smooth bone the most I would say then the many variations of jigged bone are nice as well but I'm not a fan of saw-cut bone for some reason. I love it when there is random blotches of colors like the Case Appaloosa bone or the GEC Rotten Banana bone and the woods that have random looking grain patterns like Cocobolo for example really stand out to me.
 
I just dropped a grandad barlow this week. Cracked the bone (it was a Queen/Burke collaboration with the lovely orange sawcut.......so depressing).
 
Aside from cutting chores, I tend to use my pocket knives as worry stones. Jigged bone works really well for that.
 
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