It should work fine for tool handles. Throwing conventional wisdom to the wind, sapwood seems to hold up best. Like most ring porous woods you don't really want slow grown tight growth rings, faster grown trees makes denser, stronger wood because there are fewer vessels.
Don,
What you describe is counter-intuitive to most people who think that slow growth equals denser wood. Like you pointed out, this is not the case with the ring porous woods where the wider the growth ring, the higher the specific gravity. Thanks for pointing this out!
