Handle Materials

All materials and fixtures used in handles of knives, other sharp weapons or guns. Wood, micarta, metals, bones, horns, screws, carbon fiber and other synthetic substrates used both in craftsmanship and industrial of cutlery and weapons.

Selecting the perfect handle material

Transforms an ordinary tool into an extraordinary piece of craftsmanship. Our comprehensive collection of premium materials for handles caters to every craftsman's needs, from traditional natural materials to modern synthetics. Each material in our inventory has been carefully selected to ensure the highest quality and authenticity for your projects.

Hardware components form the foundation of any quality handle construction. Our selection includes precision-manufactured stainless steel bolts, screws, snap fasteners. These essential elements not only provide structural integrity but also add distinctive aesthetic touches to your projects. Each piece is carefully sourced to meet professional standards and ensure long-lasting performance.

Natural woods remain among our most popular handle materials, offering timeless beauty and exceptional handling characteristics. Our exotic and domestic wood selection includes stabilized varieties treated to enhance durability while preserving their natural beauty. Each piece is carefully dried and prepared to prevent warping or cracking, ensuring your handles will maintain their integrity through years of use.

Modern synthetic materials provide unmatched durability and striking visual appeal. Our G10 selections offer superior grip characteristics and come in various colors and patterns. Micarta, crafted from layered materials under high pressure, provides exceptional durability and unique aesthetic possibilities. Vulcanized Spacers delivers outstanding impact resistance and stability, perfect for heavy-duty applications. Carbon Fiber and more...

Metal components add both functionality and elegance to handle designs. Our selection includes premium stainless steel for durability, classic brass for traditional appeal, elegant nickel silver for sophisticated designs, and lightweight titanium for high-performance applications. Each metal option is available in various forms, from pins and spacers to bolsters and guards.

Natural bone materials offer unique character and historical authenticity to traditional knife handles. Our carefully sourced bone materials undergo thorough stabilization processes to ensure longevity while maintaining their natural beauty. These materials connect modern craftsmanship with ancient traditions, providing distinctive handling characteristics and unique aesthetics.

Horn materials, including premium selections from buffalo, bull, ram, deer,... provide exceptional durability and distinctive natural patterns. Each piece is carefully selected for quality and undergoes thorough preparation to ensure stability and longevity. The natural variations in color and pattern make each horn handle unique, adding value to custom projects.

Exotic Banksia pine cones represent nature's artistic achievement in handle materials. These Australian natives provide intricate patterns and unique textures impossible to replicate artificially. Our Banksia products undergo careful stabilization to preserve their distinctive characteristics while ensuring practical durability for everyday use.

Mother of pearl adds luminescent beauty to any handle design. Our selection includes carefully harvested and processed pieces featuring spectacular iridescent patterns. This traditional luxury material brings elegance to any project, whether used as primary handle material or decorative inlay. Each piece is carefully graded for quality and color consistency.

Premium mammoth bone and molar materials offer unparalleled historical significance and unique characteristics. These ethically sourced, fossilized materials provide distinctive patterns and colors formed over thousands of years. Our selection undergoes careful stabilization to ensure these prehistoric treasures remain preserved while serving in modern applications.

The importance of proper material preparation cannot be overstated, which is why all our products undergo rigorous quality control processes. Natural materials receive appropriate stabilization treatments, ensuring they remain durable and beautiful throughout their lifetime. Synthetic materials are carefully manufactured to exact specifications, guaranteeing consistent quality across every batch.

Our commitment to craftsmanship extends beyond mere material supply. We provide detailed information about working characteristics, recommended tools, and finishing techniques for each material type. This knowledge-sharing approach helps ensure successful project outcomes while building lasting relationships with our customers.

Professional artisans particularly appreciate our bulk purchasing options and consistent quality standards. We maintain extensive inventory levels of popular materials while also offering unique and rare specimens for special projects. Our worldwide sourcing network ensures access to the finest materials available, often including pieces not readily available elsewhere.

Understanding the critical nature of material selection in custom knife and sword making, we maintain strict quality control standards across our entire inventory. Each piece is carefully inspected before shipping, ensuring it meets our exacting standards for quality and performance. This attention to detail helps guarantee successful project outcomes for our customers.

A handle

By definition, is the part where an instrument or utensil is held in the hand. Once we have the knife blade ready, we need to make the handle.

 What is the main premise or characteristic that a handle must meet and what we are going to design it based on? Clearly, it will be ergonomics and the use or function it will perform. The ergonomics of a handle is its ability to adapt to the hand depending on how the knife is used.

 At first glance, when we look at the handle of a knife, we can see several things: whether it has a guard or not, whether it is full tang, or hidden tang. Depending on the type of handle and tang, we find very different parts; we will explain them.

Types of tangs on a knife:

- Full tang: This is when we can see the steel of the knife blade along the handle. Thus, the handle consists of only two scales, although in many cases they have a pair of reinforcements or bolsters on the front, like a guard, which depending on the design can be functional or decorative.

 - Hidden tang: In these knives, the tang is narrower and is housed inside the handle, so we can't see it; it is also called a recessed tang. Sometimes, the end of the tang is rounded and threaded to finish the handle with a pommel. In most cases, these knives have "classic" guards that protrude from the bottom and/or top to protect us from cuts caused by the knife slipping in the hand. Although there are many knives that don't have one, see the typical criollo knives.

 - Half tang: In cases where we can only see the tang on one side or the other, part of it is hidden. Sometimes it's a full-tang, recessed along one edge, and sometimes it's a half-tang, because the width is much smaller than the total width of the handle.

 - Japanese tang: Many bowie and collectible knives that appear to have a full tang have this type of tang. The system consists of a blade with a hidden tang, recessed into a piece of steel of the same metal so that, once the handles are riveted together, the two parts are secured.

Parts of a knife handle:

- Knife guard: This element's purpose is to stop the hand from slipping in the hand during use, thus avoiding cuts.

Most commonly, non-ferrous materials are used to make them, such as brass, bronze, nickel silver, silver, etc. We can find them made of steel, and in some more exclusive knives, they are made of mokume or Damascus steel. We distinguish two types of guards: the classic ones, which have a central slot through which the knife's tang passes, usually in hidden tangs. Slotted guards, which have a cut or slot that reaches the edge, so they are inserted from the bottom. They are usually mounted on full-tang knives. And flat guards, which are riveted like the handle scales on full-tang knives. They are two separate symmetrical pieces that are riveted together, one on each side of the knife, separated by the tang.

 - Sub-hilt: word used to describe knives that are fitted with a sub-guard, or secondary guard. They usually have two slotted guards, the first separating the knife blade from the handle, and the second placed between the index and middle fingers. It is usually used on fighting knives to achieve a stronger grip.

 - Scales on a handle are the pieces we cover the handle with steel. We only speak of scales when we find a full-tang or Japanese-style knife. These can be made of a wide variety of materials, from the most classic materials: wood, horn, ivory, mahogany, mother-of-pearl, to new materials found on the market, such as micarta, carbon fiber, G10, stabilized woods, etc. In the case of hidden-tang knives, this part is generically called the handle body or handle.

- Dragon Eye: this is the through hole at the back of the handle, through which we pass a cord, which we use to secure the wrist to prevent the knife from falling. Most commonly, there is a brass or nickel-silver tube, or even a stainless steel tube as a guide, welded to the tang or flared if necessary.

 - Pommel: This is the back part of the knife or buttstock. The term "pommel" is often used when the butt is made of metal.

- Bolster: A metal ring located at the beginning of the handle as reinforcement to prevent the material from breaking with use. This term is also used to describe the metal bushing onto which the pin is riveted, which allows the blade to rotate, opening or closing.

- Button: On knives, usually forged from a round of steel, it is very common to leave the button as a decorative element and a point of balance. It separates the blade from the handle. Many Creole knives have it.

 - Pins: Pieces used to attach the handle to the knife's tang. They are usually solid round pieces of brass, nickel silver, or bronze, which remain secure once riveted. They also come in steel, Damascus steel, and even mokume. In some cases, hollow tubes are used instead of solid ones for the same purpose. Or the well-known Mosaic Pin, which are tube pins filled with other metal shapes, creating a very striking ensemble.

 - Rivets: These perform the same function as pins, the difference being that in this case, they are two pieces, both with heads, that fit into each other, like a male-female joint. Once riveted (struck), they expand one inside the other, securing the pins.

- Spacers: These aren't actually part of the handle, but rather an element that adds aesthetics to the knife. They can be found in the form of rings or as separators between the tang and the scales. The most common materials for making these rings are: leather, exotic woods, brass, copper, nickel silver, aluminum, horn, etc. For the spacers, vulcanized fiber or metal sheets (copper, brass, nickel silver) can be used.

Premium Materials for Knifemaking, Swordmaking and other Crafts

Unlike steels, we can use most materials we find for handles; however, there are always some that are more suitable for functional or aesthetic reasons.

There are a multitude of materials on the market that we can use to make the knife handle.

We'll mainly differentiate between two types of materials:

- Artificial materials: These are all those created by humans from some raw material. Most are derived from petroleum. These are more suitable for knives that will withstand extreme conditions, as they are generally more stable and durable than natural materials. Some examples are micarta, G10, and carbon fiber.

- Natural materials: These are materials we find directly in nature and manufacture for our purposes. They are suitable for all types of knives, although in many cases, artificial materials are more suitable. Through a stabilization process, we can almost match the properties offered by artificial materials. The most commonly used natural materials are horn and wood. Also, some tree fruits or roots, such as tagua nuts or Australian pine cones. Even some as exclusive as tooth fossils or mamouth.

Depending on our needs and tastes, we will opt for one or the other. As this is a very broad field, we'll provide some information about some materials, including common types...

- Horns: The most commonly used horns for making handles are deer horns and buffalo horns. Among the different subspecies of deer, the main ones are red deer and sambar deer. The latter has very exotic horns, due to their extreme pearliness.

- Bones: Camel, giraffe, and cow are the most common. Whale bones can also be used, but they are somewhat exclusive and difficult to obtain.

- Woods: This is a very broad topic, as we can find several ways to classify them.

 According to their hardness: hardwoods or softwoods.

 According to their origin/quantity/logging restrictions: common woods or exotic woods.

• Hardwoods: zembrano, lignum vitae, bocote, cocobolo, pink ivory, etc.
• Softwoods: walnut, redwood, etc.
• Common woods: olive, holm oak, oak, walnut, maple, ash, etc. (*depending on your regional some can be locals and differ form our list)
• Exotic woods: ebony, wengue, snakewood, cocobolo, pink ivory, cocobolo, bocote, lignum vitae, etc.

- Mokume: For those who don't know what it is, roughly speaking, it's a damask made with non-ferrous metals, in general, or with precious metals, such as gold, silver, or platinum.

- Tagua nuts: Also known as vegetable ivory, due to their similarity to the latter. They are the fruit of a palm tree native to Ecuador.

We can use many more, such as roots and fruits of some trees, but these are the most common in knife making.