Ever try knurling on wood?

[Tony Haukap]

I recently made a dead-blow copper hammer... http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?219140-The-most-useful-homemade-tool-in-the-shop-is
http://i57.tinypic.com/wtcbqx.jpg
...and was thinking about how I might improve the handle grip. Tapes and anything like that are out, in my experiences they just don't hold up and end up looking tacky... I might be open to maybe wrapping like Estwing leather handle hammers, although starting and stopping might be difficult to accomplish cleanly... but, then I thought, if it were metal I would knurl it! I guess I could just chuck a wood dowel in the metal lathe and and experiment a bit with it, but thought I'd ask here first if anyone has tried this? I know, for metal anyway, that knurling is more forming than cutting, and I don't know how well that will work on wood... my gut tells me it won't work and will just chew up the wood at best. Anyone have any real-world experience with this?

[Brian Kent]

A voice of non-experience, but yes I have seen it done. Here is a sample of a tool: http://www.woodturnerscatalog.com/p/49/4528/Apprentice-Wagner-Texturing-Tool

[Marvin Hasenak]

For a wood handle I would either stipple a pattern on the handle or checker one. Checkering can be done just by marking off a pattern of diamonds and cutting grooves or by using a checkering cutter. Stippling with a small burr in a Dremel would be the easiest and fastest. For a classic look, I would suggest looking for pictures of old duck calls that have been checkered using a 10 lines of less per inch pattern.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Sorby (or any of the others) spiraling tool. Works well, and the grooves grip really well. IMO it looks better than the rather random pattern of the texturing tool. Just my $0.02 of course. Some like the randomness. You can do spirals in both directions and get checkering. 1 spiral works well.

[Len Mullin]

Tony, I own the Modular Handled Sorby Micro Spiralling Tool, and it does a perfect job of texturing wood. I bought the small texturing tool that comes with two different wheels, one for fine texturing and one that is for coarser work. For tool handles, I prefer the fine wheel. I hope this bit of info helps you out.
Len

[Jim Underwood]

There are several models of texturing tools that will do the job. I've got one of the Wagner tools shown in the link above. It does knurling. You gotta hold it on the wood for a while, but eventually it will make the knurls.