rosewood handle knife

Rosewood costs what it costs because of how it has to be cut, not because of the name. Handle scales need to come off the same board and be book-matched, so the grain runs the same way down both sides of the closed knife. That means offcuts and waste, and the waste is in the price. Scales taken carelessly from whatever was nearest look wrong the moment the handles meet.

Nine of the thirty knives on this page have rosewood handles. The other twenty-one are stag horn, black horn, micarta, wenge, mammoth tooth and mother of pearl, $173.25 to $549.45, nineteen in D2 tool steel and eleven in hand-forged Damascus.

Looking after it is about as simple as knife care gets. A drop of mineral oil once or twice a year, rubbed in and wiped off. No varnish, no lacquer, and please not furniture polish, which leaves a film that turns tacky in a warm pocket.

The one thing rosewood will not do is stay the colour it is today. It darkens, and it keeps darkening. If you want the exact shade in the photograph preserved forever, wood is the wrong material and we would rather say so now.