Knife Block

[Rob Luter]

Anyone had any experience making knife blocks? I have an abundance of kitchen knives and my blocks are overflowing. I have taken to putting them in a drawer and frankly it's not safe since I sharpen them to the same degree as my chisels and planes. I need to make a big one.

I have a nice piece of maple to use. It was a bench from a locker room at a local school so I have plenty of material to laminate together. I'd just rather avoid any pitfalls that my fellow Creekers might have experienced. Just like there's no sense reinventing the wheel, there's no sense is stepping in something that's already been stepped in.

All suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance.

[Thomas McCurnin]

Yes, start by making a template for each layer of the block, and you'll probably have three such rows. Draw out the width and depth of each blade. You may have specialty pieces like scissors or one of those round file things for knives, although I've never used mine. Small steak knives in front, medium slicers in the middle row, and large chef knives, bread knives at the top plus scissors and the file thing, whatever you call that. I used a table saw and a dado blade to make the slots on only one side of the row. I ran the dados all the way, top to bottom. No stopped dados.

Also, the whole block will be angled towards you, so a band saw would be a big help, although a hand saw would do a good job. I'm not sure that I would use a table saw, as it will be a pretty big piece of wood. And there might be a larger base to hold the block because it may want to tip forward. Rubber mat glued on the base keeps the rascal well planted on my counter.

[Derek Cohen]

Rob, basically what Tom suggests. Cut open the boards, create a space for the blade, glue the boards back together. Now have fun shaping the block.

This one I made for my son and daughter in law.. The knife blades were derelict Sabatiers, and I re-handled them in a Sheoak. The base is Jarrah …

https://i.postimg.cc/s2xPf0Yh/B5-FAFEC1-2-F07-4179-9-FF0-B4-FA90-EE7-F40.png

https://i.postimg.cc/8ztBSV6G/05-E207-E7-C087-4-A7-E-B7-A4-13957407-F5-F7.png

You are only limited by your imagination.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Scott Winners]

I built mine up from half inch stock. Electric router freehand to pencil outlines drawn of the various blades. The one thing I did wrong on a previous iteration was make the routed slots exactly perfect in the winter, then the humidity went up that spring...burn pit. Mine is mounted the underside of a cabinet to keep it off the countertop.

[Patrick Kane]

Expensive and sharp steel clanging around in a drawer makes me cringe. Im so anal that my wife and guest cooks have their own set of wustoff ikons to use. Ive had shuns for 6ish years, and only recently started down the road of handmade japanese knives. Specifically, a nakiri. The geometry is nicer on the handmade nakiri, because its a thinner spine, but i dont know that its next level better than the shun nakiri. Anyway, this isnt about knives, but i have to say i prefer magnetic bars over blocks. I have a large variety of knives, and each has a specific use. I dont want to accident grab a deba out of my knife block(handles are all identical), when i wanted a nakiri/santoku/yanagiba/bread knife. It is very nice to have everything display right in front of you on your backsplash versus occupying countertop space in a knife block.

Derek's knife block is very interesting! I dont know what that looks like with 12-13 full sized knives, however.

[Lee Schierer]

I have made two knife blocks using the design shown in the photos.
486540486537
The slots for the knives were cut on the individual pieces of the block before they were assembled using screws. I started by determining the width and thickness of the blades and then determined how may could easily fit with the 3/4" thickness spacing of the block layers. The slots were cut on my table mounted router. I didn't glue the layers together in case we changed knives, I could just make a new layer or two for the newcomers. This block with the knife slots is only about 2" thick and made up of 6 layers. I made it this way to reduce the weight of the total piece. The paring/steak knife section is solid but also made up in glued up pieces. The slots in that section were cut on my TS. The slotted block slides into the outer shell and is held in place with two pocket hole screws you can see in the last photo.
486538486539

This knife block has been in use for over 20 years.

[Lee Schierer]

Expensive and sharp steel clanging around in a drawer makes me cringe. ..........Anyway, this isnt about knives, but i have to say i prefer magnetic bars over blocks.

I don't care for magnetic holders for knives because they become magnetized and it makes it harder to remove the swarf from sharpening.

[Randall J Cox]

I have made two knife blocks using the design shown in the photos.
486540486537
The slots for the knives were cut on the individual pieces of the block before they were assembled using screws. I started by determining the width and thickness of the blades and then determined how may could easily fit with the 3/4" thickness spacing of the block layers. The slots were cut on my table mounted router. I didn't glue the layers together in case we changed knives, I could just make a new layer or two for the newcomers. This block with the knife slots is only about 2" thick and made up of 6 layers. I made it this way to reduce the weight of the total piece. The paring/steak knife section is solid but also made up in glued up pieces. The slots in that section were cut on my TS. The slotted block slides into the outer shell and is held in place with two pocket hole screws you can see in the last photo.
486538486539

This knife block has been in use for over 20 years.



I've made one that looks very similar to the above, maybe a tad larger. My goof was using a finish on it instead of oil. After about 10 years the finish looked really beat up, but to late to change to oil so just refinished with more poly, looks like new. Just recently made a smaller one for a set of steak knives and used oil. Fun little project. More to it than it looks (like all things I guess). Randy

[Dan Friedrichs]

Derek, I love that "perched" design!

I did mine a little differently than others have described - I used my sliding table saw to dado the slots for the individual knives, then glued the pieces together. For the "lower" slots, I started them at the same height as the "upper" slots, then used the slider to cut out a block to let them sit lower.

[Paul F Franklin]

I went a different direction as I don't like "stuff" cluttering the countertops:

486598

Those are stunt double knives, BTW, except for the steak knives. As built it holds 23 knives but easy to make larger or smaller.

[John TenEyck]

A much easier and more universal approach is to fill a wooden box with wood straws, like this. No custom slots required.

486623

John

[Steve Demuth]

I've made several, of very different designs. My favorite was made from maple blocks into which I cut saw kerfs for the knife slots, then backfilled with walnut stock to close the open side of the kerf. I then glued the blocks together with walnut divider between them before cutting the final shape of the piece. It's not the usual way to make the slots, but I liked the effect.
486658486657486656

This was a gift to my wife in our 40th year, and to complete it, I handled all the knives, each with a different species of wood collected from trees and projects on our farm - one from Black Locust that we planted the year we moved here, one from the giant Red Oak in which our daughter's treehouse lived, one from a bittersweet trunk from a huge old vine growing in the Cottonwood that shades our old chicken coop (which is now my shop), one from a Lilac bush that she planted the second year we were here, etc.

[Brian Deakin]

The knife block in the link below is the most attractive I have seen


https://www.robertwelch.com/products/book-knife-block-set-knife-sharpener

https://images.app.goo.gl/AkQ6w2tnYeFjGNZq9