All About Pocket Knives

Here's a list of handle and scale materials I've collected, and or can get ahold of that I've never seen used. Maybe I should keep this list to myself so anything I re-handle is unique to anything else being done out there?? NAWWWW, I'll bet it won't make any difference anyhow so go ahead RWB.

Lilac wood, Tartarian Honeysuckle (common landscape shrubs native to Eastern Europe), hard, dense woods with eye pleasing grains and colors. Mountain Mahogany, another very dense and dark brown wood native to our western mountains. I collected this wood while cowboying in the Bighorns in Wyo. I've got a piece of "curley Osage Orange" that came out of a Missouri post pile. Bighorn sheep horn. A friend found an old skull washed up on a river bank here in Wyoming and gave it to me. Old buffalo horn sheaths I picked up on a ranch in the Medicine Bow mountains while working on said ranch. They were left over from the buffalo days. I know where I can pickup the hooves and teeth of a mustang carcass out in the hills in the Big Horn Basin here in Wyo. Horse "ivory" and "horn". I plan on making a "mustang" knife someday. Scrounged native materials where I live or have collected from other sources.

What materials for knife handles would anyone else care to add to this one that you think would be unique as well as eye appealing and fitting for a knife re-handle?

RWB wrote:Here's a list of handle and scale materials I've collected, and or can get ahold of that I've never seen used. Maybe I should keep this list to myself so anything I re-handle is unique to anything else being done out there?? NAWWWW, I'll bet it won't make any difference anyhow so go ahead RWB.

Lilac wood, Tartarian Honeysuckle (common landscape shrubs native to Eastern Europe), hard, dense woods with eye pleasing grains and colors. Mountain Mahogany, another very dense and dark brown wood native to our western mountains. I collected this wood while cowboying in the Bighorns in Wyo. I've got a piece of "curley Osage Orange" that came out of a Missouri post pile. Bighorn sheep horn. A friend found an old skull washed up on a river bank here in Wyoming and gave it to me. Old buffalo horn sheaths I picked up on a ranch in the Medicine Bow mountains while working on said ranch. They were left over from the buffalo days. I know where I can pickup the hooves and teeth of a mustang carcass out in the hills in the Big Horn Basin here in Wyo. Horse "ivory" and "horn". I plan on making a "mustang" knife someday. Scrounged native materials where I live or have collected from other sources.

What materials for knife handles would anyone else care to add to this one that you think would be unique as well as eye appealing and fitting for a knife re-handle?

I do a lot of wood rehandles, the old favorites ebony, coca bola, and rosewood are among my favorites. I have also rehandled with bocote, ironwood, oak burl, purpleheart, osage orange, curly maple, and want to try the piece shown below, bamboo which is a flooring material scrap. I don't recall ever seeing a pocket knife with bamboo handles. I also have some hickory, which is an extremely HARD wood normally used for hammer, axe, and other tool handles. I got some scrap hickory from a fellow who has a cabinet shop and made some cabinets for a customer from hickory.

Here's one Glenn was kind enough to do for me that will probably make you throw up in your mouth. It's Printed Circuit Board and I like it because I worked in and around electronics for my entire working career. Camillus produced a few with that handle material called the CUDA Cyber CY1 (not the 72 pattern like this) and when you find them, (apparently they weren't very popular) they're a tad expensive.

I met a custom straight knife maker from Alabama years ago that handled his knives with corn cob.

I have no idea what he did to stabilize the material, but the handles themselves looked like a lot of acrylic or something similar with a corn cob in the center.

Quite attractive, actually.

Charlie Noyes

Copper (currently working on one with this), brass, micarta, g10, Leather, carbon fiber, various antlers, and Mokume-Gane, to name a few more.

Im with OC. Any wood I can gather up is a possibility.

Jerry, nice novelty scales. Are those circuit boards in resin?


I would be interested in seeing some of the horse material that you have.

Tony_Wood wrote:Jerry, nice novelty scales. Are those circuit boards in resin?

Nope. Just the raw PCB (unpopulated of course).

Bark River has been using stabilized pine cones for handle material. Rather attractive in my opinion. The handle material, already stabilized, is readily available online.