Wood as a handle?

J

Jesus

Member
I was going to post this in someone else's thread, but didn't want to hijack it. Anyways I notice a lot of people use wood for a handle. Now my question is if you used the knife outdoors extensively, would the handle crack and warp with the hot sun in the day and the high humidity at night/day? I live in Houston, Tx and out here it gets very hot and humid. I had an old shotgun with a wooden stock and it got ruined after leaving it outside everyday for a couple of years.

I'm assuming the same would happen to a wood handled knife?
 
If you leave it outside for a couple of years, yes.

Don't do that.

Just as the blade needs to be sharpened and oiled occasionally, the handle also needs to be oiled or waxed occasionally. Treat it with respect, and it will out-live you.
 
I use only stabilized wood. Most of my knives have wood handles.

My first custom knife sold got left in the open bed of a pickup truck for a year, accidentally. The customer that bought the knife for his brother ran across the knife and brought it to me for blade rust.

The blade was mirror polished tool steel and the handle was stacked deer antler and Osage Orange with 99.99% silver inlays. The handle was epoxied with Brownells AcraGlas with hidden pins running horizonal and also some hidden pins running through the tang. This was before stabilizing material was popular. I used some commercial oil based gloss wood finish on the wood. The knife and sheath were in great shape, except for blade rust that I cleaned up and polished as good as I could.

The customer paid me a good sum for the knife and was pretty upset with his forgetful brother. I didn't charge him for the cleanup and fix for the knife, even though the damage wasn't a fault of my work or materials.

The knife and sheath were exposed to a regular Iowa winter that year as the truck sat outside the whole year.
 
Thanks for the help all of you. This is some good stuff, if I buy a wood handle knife I'll make sure to check if it is stabilized. Learning something new everyday!
My first custom knife sold got left in the open bed of a pickup truck for a year
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LOL sounds like me.. you're a pretty nice businessman, I'm sure a knife shop would have been like "sorry, your fault not mine. It'll be $150 to fix it.." it's rare nowadays to find honest folk
 
((((LOL sounds like me.. you're a pretty nice businessman, I'm sure a knife shop would have been like "sorry, your fault not mine. It'll be $150 to fix it.." it's rare nowadays to find honest folk ))))

That isn't being a "honest folk" it's being a VERY GOOD guy.
 
Thanks for the kind words, fellas! That customer brought me a lot of business by word of mouth, but that wasn't my intention when I reworked the blade.

The knife mentioned, I was working on the knife, trying to finish it a couple of weeks before Christmas for my youngest son. A fella stopped by to visit and when he saw the knife, just HAD to have the knife.

He asked what I had to have for the knife. Needless to say, I had no clue what to ask. He offered me $375 for the knife! I was astounded but kept my poker face and told him he just bought a knife. He then slapped down full payment of cash and added half down on a second knife, same price!

After he left, I felt like doing cartwheels! LOL!

Additional orders immediately came in when that same customer passed the word on, both then and a year later when I did the fix job.
 
Speaking of wood, I have been having a long big run on stabilized Osage orange. I find the crookest pieces and have them stabilized after I dry it. Knotts in Osage don't loosen up, by the way. They add a lot of color and character to the grain, as you probably already know. Some Osage has some nice red streaks. Osage is easy to come by here in SE Iowa.

I was able to buy a small amount of Osage burl, all contrasting brown in color, but attractive. Osage burl grain looks like a snarl of brown hair.

Second runner up for sales is stabilized buckey burl, having a good run on it.

I recommend not messing with finishes for wood. Just go ahead and dry it and then get it stabilized by WSSI, great folks.
 
The trueth is that it's going to depend on the wood. Some woods are extreemly stable and stand up to high humidity and changes in temperature quiet well just as is. Others will beniffet from stabilization. If you are really worried about it, like the knife might be left sitting in the sink with the handle soaking in a mixing bowl full of water, or going into a dish washer, then there are things like Micarta and G10.

Doug
 
That isn't being a "honest folk" it's being a VERY GOOD guy.
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Yeah that's what I was implying

Thanks for the kind words, fellas! That customer brought me a lot of business by word of mouth, but that wasn't my intention when I reworked the blade...
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Nice John! Goes to show that if you treat your customers right, they'll treat you right

The trueth is that it's going to depend on the wood.
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I have a question.. would me getting some nice wood from a nearby forest to use for a knife handle be a good move? I'm assuming since these forests are always out here in the hot humid weather, they are naturally going to last longer compared to maybe some wood from the north? My bad if I sound all weird, I'm not exactly sure how to ask my question..
 
Jesus, heck yeah, getting wood from your local woods would be just fine. I figure a year per inch of wood to dry in my shop, which is a seperate building that goes through all the natural temp changes over a year's time. I store most of my wood in the shop.

Be sure to paint the ends of the pieces of wood right away, as soon as you can, after getting the wood.

I was going to add, I recommend using carbide for cutting dried Osage. It will dull or wreck a regular sawblade. One of my sons turned some dry Osage on my wood lathe and it didn't dull the gouges as bad as I thought it would. Go figure. He was messing around making some duck and goose callers.
 
A year ago I did a test on cherry and oak blocks glued to 5160 sanded to 400 (if memory serves) and glued with Loctite E120-HP. I treated blocks of cherry and oak in a variety of ways from Tru-Oil to plain safflower oil. http://knifedogs.com/showthread.php?15460-Wood-in-the-Kitchen-a-test&highlight=wood+kitchen (skip to page 4 for the dramatic conclusion)

Multiple looooong soaks in hot soapy water with drying between. Cherry warped and cracked more than Oak... but there were some winners: the Turpentine/Spar Urethane/Linseed Oil brew, Permalyn, and yes - Safflower Oil. Tru-Oil did pretty well too but I find it annoying to apply. It's a year later and the Safflower Oil blocks have not gone rancid yet.

I'm partial to the Turp/Spar/Linseed brew.

Also you might check out my good friend Eric's test that included stabilized woods and Ironwood: http://www.ochssherworx.com/index_files/Page513.htm

I have a cunning plan to do a 2nd round of tests to put the winners up against K&G and WSSI stabilized pieces and a parallel test of the E120-HP, Acraglas, and West Systems G-Flex glues on oil treated blocks. Maybe this Summer. That Cherry wood really warped and cracked - that's the one to test with!
 
As has been said, there is nothing wrong with using natural hard wood such as Maple, Osage, Oak, Walnut, etc as long as they are oiled and taken care of.

The stock on your shotgun cracked because it was abused for a year, not because it was wood.

Natural woods have been used for centuries on knives and gun stocks. You just have to take care of them like you would any other tool... well maybe YOU need to take care of them better than YOU would any other tool.
Jason
 
Jesus you got lots of good info on the wood, but who leaves a gun outside for a couple years unattended lol ?
 
y'all been a huge help thanks for that!! I may start making knives like y'all, put my imagination to good use... the only thing that trips me out is messing with metal at extremely hot temps, any mistake could be painful (and the long lasting kind of pain) and expensive.

@John Andrews
thanks for the golden tips!

LOL @ HELLGAP, well it's a Sears Ted Williams Special 12g from the 80's, and it ain't my shotgun of choice so that one gets lost behind the others.. but since it's such a long lasting reliable pump, I just leave it outside for just in case the moment arrives when I'm outside, and I need a shotgun. You never know haha. It still shoots like brand new!
 
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