When I draw a knife design I
usually have some idea of the materials I am going to use on the knife,
depending on the purpose of the knife, its shape and lines. What happens
on the drawing board sometimes changes when the time comes to go through
my stock of materials.
The reverse also happens, when I
find a piece of material that begs to be made into a knife handle. I would
then design a knife for that particular piece of handle material.
The selection process can be quite
arduous and time consuming. To select a suitable material for a knife
requires the same kind of thinking one applies at the drawing board; the
same questions need to be asked. – Purpose, line, form, balance,
texture/surface, contrast, visual weight, colour, matched grain/ pattern
Is the material suited to the
knife? Is it strong enough? How does it react to blood, sweat, oil, dust,
water, heat or cold? Here is where synthetics come into their rightful
place, as you do not have to worry about these environmental factors. It
also takes lot of the challenge and fun out of material selection.
You have to know your materials,
how to select, prepare, cut and store it. You also need to know what to
tell the buyer about storage, how to clean, polish or oil it after use.
One of the main complaints about
wood is “It moves” This is something every cabinetmaker knows and
compensates for. Unfortunately, the knifemaker attaches the wood to an
immovable object, the knife tang, causing all sorts of problems. On some
days the tang is exposed, on others, the handle slabs have swollen and the
tang is sitting in a shallow channel. The best way to get past this is to
select very dense woods such as desert ironwood, Leadwood or Rhodesian
teak. The exception is olive wood. While it is very dense, and oily, it is
the wood that shows the greatest amount of movement of all the woods I
have used in knives.
Another aspect of using natural
materials is brittleness. The harder the material, the more brittle you
can expect it to be.
Select wood to follow the contours
of the handle, and avoid short grain.
