your top 3-5 WOOD for handles

1. Mesquite
2. African Blackwood
3. Texas Ebony
4. That one piece of wild Mexican Plum burl that I can't get any more of
5. Osage Orange
6. Mesquite

I like to keep it Texas when I can. And I used to live in Tanzania where the blackwood grows so I'm partial to it too.
 
1. Red cocobolo
2. Desert Ironwood
3. African Blackwood
4. Curly/Birdseye maple (especially the kiln dried stuff I found)
5. Nice stabilized burls (can't really decide which ones I like the most- real helpful I know)

Not in any order. I have many yet to try personally, but these rank in the tops of what I have done and seen.
 
1.Desert Ironwood
2.African Blackwood
3.Tiger Stripe Maple
4.Highly Figured Walnut
5.Desert Ironwood
 
I like local woods...so I use a lot of (honey) Mesquite and have some Texas Ebony. For pure looks, birdseye maple just strikes a chord with me.
 
Ironwood
African blackwood
Spalted maple burl
Amboyna Burl
Tiger maple

I have others but those are my current favorites.
Brion
 
Glad to see I'm not the only one with African Blackwood topping the list, it's good stuff, looks almost like ebony without all the problems of ebony...
1.African blackwood
2.lignum vitae
3.Arizona ironwood
4.olive wood (for some reason I love the stuff)
5.local hardwoods (hickory, white and red oak, rock maple, hornbeam, walnut)
 
mdoyle said:
Larry send me an email and I'll send you some pics!
Matt
Click to expand...

Thanks Matt, I found quite a few pics when I researched it. Feel like a fool now as I have studied the Oz burls, but never got enchanted with most of them due to voids, cracks and other defects which are fine for turners, but not so good for knife handles. These two burls look pretty nice!!
 
is it true or not--some of the knifemakers i talk to dont like to use the aussie burls because they crack and void easily and are generally hard to work with--marekz
 
Depending on what the voids look like I sometimes leave em instead of filling em. I kinda look at it like this. I finish the handle to better show off the character and texture of the wood, not just make the wood look perfect and all filled in. Of course if the voids are the size of pencil erasers well maybe those need to be filled in.
 
I kinda like the voids too. On this piece of jarrah, I applied some thin CA to help strengthen the piece, but I left the larger voids. I think it adds to the appearance.

3816766622_37875fa70a_o.jpg
 
My favorite for looks is by far good desert iron wood burl
For general knife handles I like some of the dark and oily rosewoods that you dont really need to apply much of a finish to other than a nice polish and buff
I havent worked with it much but i really like the look of good ambyona burl.
 
FWIW, my top knife show sellers are:

1...Stabilized amboyna burl
2...Honduras rosewood burl (except BLADE where AG and Goldie Russell bought all making it #1)
3...stabilized natural dark spalted maple burl or non burl spalted maple
4...stabilized mesquite burl
 
While we are talking about wood from Australia heres my list. 1. Ringed Gidgee 2 Lace sheoak, 3 PNG black wood,not exactly Aust but close enough,4 Boyakker, 5 western myerl, 6 Ringed Boonaree, 7 Bimbelbox , 8 Aust Purple heart, 9 Belah, 10 Jara. Note no cracked up eucalypt rubbish,we send all of that over to you Yanks,or throw it on the fire. :)
 
Stabilized buckeye burl, Osage orange, figured and burl walnut, tiger, spaulted, and burl maple, desert ironwood, to name a few.

Right now I am having a run on stabilized Osage orange.
 
For my own use, my favorites are in this order:
Redwood Burl - the naturally hard oily kind
Quilted Redwood - where the figure looks like bubbles the size of peas
Mineralized Maple - unusual colors from being in the swamps (curly or quilted)
Quartersawn Sycamore - lightly spalted for color with snakeskin flecks
Dark Blue Buckeye Burl with some contrasting white

What sells best for me are:
Buckeye Burl - all color variations
Spalted Maple Burl
Redwood Burl - all types
Curly Redwood
Manzanita Burl
 
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