Making a knifehandle from green wood.

[emtor]

Making a knife handle from green wood is never a good idea. When it dries it'll crack and split unless you're very lucky. Wood for knife handles needs to be very dry, but what do you do with that piece of wood still containing moisture and you just need to get going right now?
Buy raw linseed oil,-the virgin cold pressed variety is the best. Fill a jar with linseed oil and submerge the wood in it. Within a week the oil has replaced all traces of water which acts as a guarantee against cracking.
The wood benefits from being saturated with oil in other ways too, as it gets easier to work with a knife. Some woods are difficult to cut in the sense that big chunks tend to come loose when you cut in it. This nasty tendency is minimized when treating the wood with oil. Raw linseed oil also makes the wood develop that particular "linseed oil sheen". The wood looks almost transparent giving the surface a very deep sheen.
The only downside is making the tang of the blade stick to the handle as nothing will stick to raw linseed oil. This is particularly difficult with a hidden tang handle. The solution is to make a cavity inside the handle much the same way as dentists do when they fill a cavity in a tooth.
Use epoxy resin and make sure it fills any space between the handle and the tang. Now the tang will be fixed permanently in place inside the handle.

Edited November 11, 2008 by emtor

[Rob Browne]

Good hints there but I think I would stay with using seasoned timber. Basically I'm lazy and its simply easier

After saying that I will remember this technique though.

[Robert Mayo]

My question is why you would even want to put a handle on a knife using green wood.
It may be just me but i want my knives to be the best that i can make them and green wood will never be a part of them.

Bob

[julian]

not having epoxy stick to a knife is a pretty big problem.

the cavity idea sounds decent, but I certainly wouldn't trust it over a wood that glues properly. Full tang knives would also not work right at all.

In my opinion, I wouldn't sell a knife that I knew wasn't as strong as it could be.

[petersenj20]

Small items of wood can be dried with very satisfactory results by using a microwave. I have a link here somewhere and will try to post that describes the best way to do it "perfected" by wood turners.

Here's a good one. Never done it myself though.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~rhaslip/Rex/workshop/microwave/microwav.htm

Edited November 12, 2008 by petersenj20
Added link