You could make a whole study of implement handles and the woods that have been found to be most suitable from a regional stand-point. There was a time when the farmer or carpenter or tool maker made handles with what was available locally and a whole body of knowledge developed about which wood to go to for the best ones. Of course with the onslaught of the capitalistic impulse, mostly that knowledge has gotten obscured by the limited choice of what you can find in the box store on the outskirts of town where the racks are stocked by management types, or order up over the internet, to put it in an up-to-date way.
Anyway, around here - middle part of Europe, I have found that next to ash, elm is most often seen as a handle for a broadaxe and then beech wood. Then you would look to the North of here and in the Baltic area and it seems elm is preferred but they also use birch from the tree which your grandfather had picked out and started manipulating in its growth when the tree was just a sapling. The real knowledgeable ones will tell you to get your handle from crab apple. On the other side, the Frenchman has gone into it and found that hawthorn is a suitable wood and particular kinds of ash, to which the Dutchman will add that that ash must be a male and not the female one. This is really only a sampling of the woods found to have particular charismatics which make them suitable for good handles.