Carl Russell discussed an old scalper, which I believe was marked FURNIS, and reported some scrapings from the wood handle were sent to a lab for analysis. The results indicated East Indian rosewood. This was in
Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men.
You sometimes see references to camwood and barrwood for trade knife handles, but I think people sometimes toss these terms around without really knowing what they are. The "common" names for tropical hardwoods sometimes change over time. I researched this some time back, and concluded that these were very similar to padauk, and in fact @Runewolf used padauk for the handle on an outstanding scalper he made for me not long ago, and I could not be better pleased with this knife. In any event, I have been unable to find a source for camwood or barrwood.
There are references to "red handled scalpers" and I just recently saw the term "redwood scalper," although for the life of me, I can't remember where it was. However, I have no doubt this meant "red-colored wood," and not California redwood. I agree with
@LRB 's assertion that European beech or African or South American hardwoods would have been most common, although I would add East Indian rosewood to the list. Wick also reports the use of boxwood for scalper handles. I would trust his research. I haven't yet found boxwood specifically mentioned for scalping knives, but I have seen it referenced for butcher knife handles. I have two antique butcher knives, one British and one German, which I believe are hafted with boxwood. All of the other dozen or so old butcher knives that I have are hafted with beech.
"Boxwood" is another name that gets confusing. I'm pretty sure the old-time Sheffield cutlers would have used
true boxwood,
Bruxus sempervirens. This stuff is impossible to get now. However, there are at least two other woods which are marketed as boxwood now. Taxonomically, they are not related to true boxwood, but the wood of all three species is very similar in every way. The one you are most likely to find is marketed as Castello boxwood. I don't have any of it, but I would like to get some and would not hesitate to use it for hafting a copy of a historic knife.
Old knife catalogs often list knives with "cocoa" handles, meaning cocobolo. However, I don't think I've seen this wood specifically associated with scalping knives. I've gotten the impression that butcher knives were hafted with a greater variety of woods than scalpers. Edwin Thompson Denig, who was the bourgeois at Fort Union in what is now North Dakota, specifically mentioned "brazilwood" and logwood as the woods typically used in hafting the butcher knives being traded out of his post. In looking through James Hanson's
Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook, we find a couple of butchers hafted with walnut and one with ash, but I believe these were probably from much later in the 19th century.
"Brazilwood" (pronounced "brazzlewood" back in the day) and logwood were much in demand for making red dye. Brazilwood is now better known as pernambuco, and it is the very best wood for making violin bows. It is also a threatened species now, and I don't think it is being exported. However, there is a wood from Mexico called "chakte viga," or "Mexican pernambuco," which is in the same genus and is remarkably similar to the Brazilian wood, it is relatively inexpensive and not hard to find. I have used it for knife handles, and it works great. It may be very slightly lighter in color than true pernambuco, but the difference is minimal. It finishes out to a beautiful deep, brownish red with just a very small amount of linseed oil rubbed in
There is a persistent rumor that butcher and scalping knife blades were sold from the trading posts to be hafted by the end-users. I have not found anything in the primary source materials I have read to corroborate this. Some crooked knives and snow knives, as well as fur trade-era bayonets and "dags," were sold as bare blades, but as far as I know butcher knives and scalpers were only sold as completed knives. The ones you see with "country made" handles were probably re-hafted after the original handle broke, split, or burned.
There is a very simple handmade belt knife, shown in
American Primitive Knives, which has a beautiful curly maple handle. However, I have never seen or heard of an original trade knife, scalper or butcher, with an original handle of maple.
So, for hafting a fur-trade era scalping knife, East Indian rosewood is a very "safe" choice... It is widely available and affordable, it is being grown commercially, and laboratory analysis showed it was used for hafting a very typical original. In my opinion, padauk would also be a very good choice in that it is similar to and may even be "camwood," which is often mentioned as scalping knife handle material, but I have never found camwood for sale. Wick tells us boxwood and beech were used for scalping knife handles. Castello boxwood should be a good substitute for the European or Persian boxwood used originally.
We know pernambuco, ebony, and cocobolo were used for hafting some of the cutlery back then, but it might be a stretch to use one of these on a scalper. Likewise, walnut and ash were documented by James Hanson on a few old butcher knives, but I've never heard of these being used on scalpers. I would not use maple, hickory, locust or Osage on a trade knife, unless you can come up with a story about re-hafting your blade. I don't see any reason not to use any of these for a handmade knife from an American blacksmith, though.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
