Building the Knife Block

Now that all four of the knives have been completed for my daughter's kitchen knife set, it's time to finish off the project with a little bit of woodworking.  Before I caught the knife-making bug, I dabbled in woodworking for a time.  Nothing too fancy, mind you, but I did enjoy the process of creating simple pieces out of wood.  It was nice to blow the dust off some of my old tools and work with wood again. Below are some photos I took of the process of putting the knife block together for the kitchen set.

The supply of hardwood is very limited here in my hometown.  Unless I go through the process of ordering wood from online sources, not being able to self select the materials and paying a fortune in shipping costs, I'm stuck with whatever the local lumberyards have in stock.  In this case my selection was between oak and plain old poplar.  Not much of a choice really, so oak it was.  Oak is not my favorite wood choice, but I think it will actually look good next to the box elder handle scales of the knives.  All of the available stock was also limited to 1" thick, which in reality is only 3/4" thick.  So, being impatient and ready to put this project to rest, I purchased some 1" x 12" stock and commenced the process of gluing up a laminated block.  Here's the stack of wood with my paper pattern on top. The rectangles on the pattern show where the blade holes will be located in the center of the block.

One of the benefits of laminating this block together is that I can cut out the blade holes before I glue up the block.  To get started on this, I need to plane down the thickness of the center layer to about 3/16", which will be slightly wider than the knife blades, but not too over sized to where the blades will be sloppy in the hole.  The old trusty thickness planer accomplishes this task.

Here's the board after being planed to thickness.

Next, I cut each of the five boards to shape on the table saw.  I could do this once everything is assembled if I had better equipment, but my table saw won't cut through the full thickness of the assembled piece.  So, each layer gets cut to shape separately before glue up.

With some trusty Elmer's rubber cement, the kind that you used back in grade school, I fix the pattern to the thin center layer.

With the pattern fixed to the wood, it's off to the band saw to cut out the blade recesses.  Here's the piece after the blade holes have been cut out.

With a little finessing and a lot of clamps, the five layers get glued up with some water resistant wood glue and allowed to dry.

Here's the block after the glue is dry and the clamps have been removed.  The edges are a little uneven, but we'll take care of that in the next step.

Using my jointer, I shave off the edges of the box until the surfaces are smooth and square to the sides of the block.

Here's the test fit with the knives in the block.  Amazingly enough, they actually fit!  Looks pretty good too.

To pretty things up a bit, I decided to chamfer the sharp edges around the block.  This is done with a chamfering bit at my router table.

Here's the block after the detail work is complete.  It's ready for some finish sanding.

Here's my trusty pad sander that was used to smooth things up.  I've logged many hours on this old thing and it just keeps on running.  Not bad for a cheap tool.

Here's the final piece after a hand-rubbed oil varnish has been applied.  Once the finish is dry, I'll apply a coat of wax and give it a buff to bring up the shine.  This project is so close to the end that I can almost taste it.  Once everything is finished, I'll brake out the good camera and take some better pics of this project and post them up for your viewing pleasure.

I brought the set into the house for my daughter to inspect.  I caught her in the kitchen slicing up some strawberries and, try as I may, I couldn't get her to try out her new knives.  So, I pulled out the paring knife from the block and started helping her cut up the berries. Someone had to take them out for a test drive!  Sharp, smooth, and comfortable.  They passed my own inspection with flying colors. Now, I'm pretty sure that my sweet wife is going to want her own set.  Hopefully I can squeeze in a few folders before that happens, as I'm hankering in the worst way to start on a new folding knife.  I had a great time with this project and produced what will hopefully be a family heirloom. Thanks for following along with me on this project and sharing in my knife-making adventures.

-  Brandant Robinson