Bubinga is an African wood with a really cool name. Like the kingwood I talked about yesterday, it’s a rare wood that’s used for fine furniture and things like that, but bubinga is also used in bow making because it has a very high strength to weight ratio. It’s nice and light on the handle of a knife, but it’s very hard, and I have to use fresh sandpaper when I’m sanding it on my knife grinder to keep from burning the wood at high speeds. 
This wood is going to make a lighter, reddish-brown handle than kingwood from yesterday. It also has strong grain lines, but not as think and bold. This is going to make another really sweet handle! The brick-red liner closely matches the wood, and I think it really compliments the color. 
The bubinga is a very durable wood and it’s going to make a good, long-lasting knife handle. It can be used in its natural state, or it can be stabilized. There’s several different process that can be used to “stabilize” a handle material, but basically this means to fill the grain and the pores in the wood with some form of clear resin using a vacuum or high pressure. Stabilization helps to keep your wood from expanding and contracting with changes in temperature and humidity, and some people thinks it makes the wood look better. And stabilization also makes the wood easier to work with and take a better finish. What do you think? Are the benefits of stabilizing this wood worth the extra time and trouble, or does it look and perform better without? 
Yes, an excellent wood, and familiar to those of us who’ve had the pleasure of playing a a Warwick bass!