Oak Knife Handles

I have been planning to start phasing out using some tropical hardwoods for knife handles (ebony, cocobolo are quickly approaching endangered status), and switching to stabilized domestic woods. I have been thinking of using stabilized oak that has been turned dark or even black. I finally kicked myself into a gear to work on it. Will report once I get some results.

Marko

Looking forward to pictures.

Are there domestic woods that are dense/oily enough to use ustabilized and unfinished? I'd imagine ironwood? I noticed you skew toward cocobolo, lignum vitae, ebony etc. as it sands and buffs well.

I guess it depends on the type. Silky oak is nice, white & red oak...meh. I guess if anyone can make it work, you can.

There is a place called Timeless Timbers back there in the NE.
They salvage old sinker logs from the Great Lakes. Some of which have turned really nice dark colors.
Red Oak if you can find pieces with tight curl looks great. And White Oak if you plan to dye it.

Burl Source said:

There is a place called Timeless Timbers back there in the NE.
They salvage old sinker logs from the Great Lakes. Some of which have turned really nice dark colors.
Red Oak if you can find pieces with tight curl looks great. And White Oak if you plan to dye it.

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I was just going to suggest the same thing. you beat me to it. great minds think alike.

I have an access to huge volume of cutoffs in red and white oak (stairs building business upstairs) that otherwise are simply disposed. Some have pretty nice grain figure, and would look great on a handle.

Dying oak dark or black during stabilizing doesn't produce anything like bog oak in appearance and actually doesn't look that good I was told, so I am going to take a different approach. I still need to figure it out and test it, but I might be able to produce dark brown or even black oak that can be stabilized afterwards.

I won't stop making handles from nicer woods, but some woods I won't be stacking, and have the customer supply handle material instead. For professional line ready made knives that I would like to keep affordable, I will use select grade domestic hardwoods, like maple, walnut, oak, etc.

Marko