This might be thinking a bit "too far" out of the box, but how about Ironwood, or figured Walnut, etc... cut with a checkered pattern, like the old "diamond" 1911 grips? A diamond at the hilt and a diamond at the butt...

WHOA!!!!!!!
A wood handle - walnut is "classic" - with a checkered pattern is a GREAT IDEA!!!!!!

Tony

This is a great idea..."BUT"...(There's that word again)...Who's gonna' do the work? How long will it take? What will the costs be? All valid questions. Perdue and Skaggs are backed up for years. Dennis Holland does fabulous checkering on pistol/revolver grips but I've seen his knife handles and they ain't for me.
I think we need to build the knife, Crew. The whole matching pair thing is getting precedence over the actual knife build, which is the one part of this "1911" build we should be able to accomplish without much delay. The grips can certainly be added, and out of the same material. The problem will be anything "else".
Gene Beal will be able to sell me a pair of ivory grips, but that's all he deals in. I can get Gene to make us a set of grips in any type of wood we can agree on, providing it is "doable". Lignum Vitae, for example, is just too hard to work with and he will not spend his time on it.
It goes back to: Let's build the knife, keeping in mind that we want matching material for a set of grips. I think that's enough for now. Let me hear your thoughts, crew.
Best, Capt. Chris

OK ... back to reality.
Like I said ...
I think that Maple Burl would be GREAT!
Great color. Great grain.
Would make cool looking grips too.
Tony

Gotta have sawteeth...

I think wood would be the best material for the knife handle and 1911 grips. I have grips in birdseye maple, ironwood and walnut, and CC's in ironwood and maple burl. Any of those would work for me.
I like sawteeth too

Peter

O.K. Maple with lots of color and figuration would look good. Saw teeth look coll as well.

I like Cocobola or Amboyna wood for the handle. I've also seen 1911 grips made from Cocobola and they look great.

Dan Snyder
RKS #5537
SHAG #010

The Cocobola grips that I've had on my S&W 629 Classic are beautiful, made by Hoague, tough and comfortable. I've shot full-house hunting loads with it for years.
I've been thinking for a while that this wood would make a great handle on a Randall.

Duke, the knife in my avatar is Tom Clinton special with cocobola wood handle and the Model 1 which was the first build for the Remember Roscoe is also cocobola. The Captain was kind enough to post pictures of it in the Remember Roscoe thread if you would like to see a really nice Randall with a cocobola wood handle.

Dan Snyder
RKS #5537
SHAG #010