We needed some knife storage for the kitchen, so I made up this Cherry block to hold the selection of knives we had at the time, with some room for expansion. It is made by laminated flat pieces of wood, with the thickness of the pieces determining knife spacing or opening size. It works pretty well, and in an amazing feat of prescience, now matches the cupboards we installed 7 years after it was made. This was the first significant laminating I had done. I hadn't realized until then that wood glue is actually an excellent lubricant, that just happens to stick if you leave it for too long. Even with alignment pins, clamping parts of the block caused a fair amount of movement. Slight misalignments in the clamps (especially Quick-Grip type) seems to result in lots of lateral force that causes parts to slide against each other under the lubricating effects of the glue, unless they are well constrained.
Update 2022: We had acquired a few extra knives over the years and filled up the unused slots with one knife left over. After cleaning out a drawer in which we stored one of the extras, I thought I'd just build a new one with the extra slot. It was pretty much
exactly the same design and just a bit longer to acommodate the extra slot.
| Material: | Cherry |
| Construction: | Laminated |
| Finish: | 2 coats Danish oil |
| Size: | 13" d x 9.25" h x 2.6" w |
| Done: | October 12, 1997 |
