Recommended Wood for Jerry's Draw Knife Handles?

[Joe A Faulkner]

I have no experience turning, so for those of you who are experienced at making replacement handles for draw knives and chisels, what species are well suited for this purpose? And do you recommend kiln dried, air dried or green wood assuming he is going to turn the handles?

What if he was going to shape the handles using gouges, chisels, knives, rasps, maybe even resort to some sand paper? Would that change your recommendation?

[Matt Lau]

I'm not experienced at this, but I'd expect anything that he's happy with would be fine.
In a worst case scenario, he can go with what he used to have.

In my (limited) understanding, workmen used cutoffs of their wood to make handles as needed.
Any reasonably stable wood (oak, maple, walnut, cherry, rosewoods, mahogany, elm, osage orange, ebony, etc) should work fine. Kiln will work. IMO air dried is nicer.

For easiest workability, walnut, maple, cherry, apple, birch, and pearwood would be on my short list.

[Matt Lau]

Note, I haven't done this yet....so take it for what it's worth (not much).

[Jim Koepke]

My suggestion would be to use what is on hand as scrap or locally available.

We recently took down a couple of cascara trees. It was mostly an accidental discovery that it turns so well. A little of the cascara has been saved from the firewood pile.

Ash is plentiful in some areas and makes good tool handles. Another contender in my area is vine maple. It is another one of those 'weeds' that are often overlooked.

Another local 'weed' is bog cherry or bitter cherry. The tree doesn't have deep roots so it often falls over before getting very big. It makes great chisel handles and my favorite mallet is made from pieces salvaged from the firewood pile.

jtk

[Warren Mickley]

My first choice woods would be soft maple (red maple) and beech. These woods turn nicely and are rather dead woods, which means they tend to absorb rather than transmit shock. This gives them a very nice feel in your hand when working. Walnut handles also have a nice feel, and ash is a dead wood but maybe not as comfortable because of coarse grain.

If you don't have a lathe, I would make tapered octagonal handles: start with a square blank, plane off the corners and make a slight taper and chamfer or round the butt end. Trying to mimic turning with other tools is a lot of work for something that doesn't look or feel that great.

[Jerry Olexa]

Thanks Joe for the post....I too went through this question when I made my first chisel handles a few months ago.
I'm no expert but I now agree generally with Jim to use whatever hardwood scrap is available in your shop.. Handles require very little wood usually .Its more, for me, a question of the thickness (6/4 or more) before i cut blanks and head to my small lathe to turn..Thanks for posting..I'll continue to follow your suggestions..

[Bob Glenn]

FWIW. I've really grown to like octagonal handles on tools. I have converted my Knew Concepts coping saw handle from round to octagonal (See my shop tip last year in PW) and have done all my mallets and hewing axes. I will soon refurbish an old draw knife and will put new carved octagonal handles on the tangs. I find the octagon handles give me a better grip and feel for the registration of the cutting edge.