Today’s handle material post features chechen wood. Pictures are never as good as the real thing, but to give you an idea, this wood looks a lot like rosewood, but much lighter in color.
Chechen grows in Mexico and the Caribbean, and another name for the wood is poisonwood. The sap is an irritant on bare skin, and loggers have to take steps to protect themselves from the it when harvesting the wood. In dried wood, this isn’t an issue, but I always wear my respirator when I’m sanding regardless. It’s hard to live long enough to be a successful knife maker if you breath fine metal and wood dust all day long without protection.
On a knife handle, chechen’s a pretty decent wood. It has a fairly tight grain, though it could still benefit from stabilization, and the contrast of the dark growth rings and the lighter wood makes a very pretty handle. It doesn’t burn very easily either, so it’s easier to work with than kingwood or bubinga, but it’s still plenty hard enough to hold up on the handle of a knife.
While I was researching Chechen wood, I found out that there is a people group of the Caucasus region of eastern Europe, called the Chechens. I couldn’t find any connection between the name of the Mexican wood and this people, but if you have a half hour or so of your life to spare, you might look up the history of these fiercely independent people. The entire Chechen culture, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, has come close to complete annihilation several times in history – by the Mongols, by the Russian czars, and by the Soviet Union. I have to wonder what styles of traditional knives the Chechens developed over their long history as tools and weapons in their culture. In knife making, there’s always something more to learn.
Patrick Roehrman