This may be a dumb question. Do we have any trees in the south east that would be suitable for doing this? It would be cool to have some knives with handles that came off the place but not if they sucked.
I really know nothing about the stabilization process or what makes a good wood for it. If this plays into it or not I can't say, but a local wood that's really hard/tough is Osage or Osage Orange some folks call it. It also has a little different color that might make it unique. Again...I don't know much about it but Osage came to mind.