Woodworking Project: the Knife Rack

After the endless slog that was the laundry room cabinets, I decided I could really use a simpler little quickie of a project before diving headlong into the next major build. As it happened, we just got a couple new knives, thanks to a promotional thing at the local grocery stores and we were running out of places to store them.

We already had a knife block, one of those ones designed to be universal, and it had worked really well for us for a long time. Unfortunately, the little plastic strands that make up the bulk of the block had all become frayed and bent, making it not only difficult to push the knives into the block, but also reducing the number of knives we could store in it. It was also somewhat top-heavy and prove to tipping over - especially given that our new knives were a little on the heavy side.

The War Department though that it might be nice to make one that went in a drawer, and hopefully reclaim some counter space. So after looking around online, I decided on an overall design and headed into the shop.

Of course, this was also the perfect excuse to use my new toy - our Christmas present to ourselves this year:

Ooooh, baby!

A while back, a friend of ours had given us an old desk that she didn't want anymore. I brought it home and cannibalized it for the wood, which turned to be - I THINK - cherry. After picking over the pieces, I settled on a couple of boards that I think were pull-out writing surfaces. Along with a couple of scrap pieces of cherry left over from my tool box project, I planed them down and cut them to rough size.

Then I made a template out of a thin piece of plywood to make sure I got the right shape, and transcribed it to one of my cherry blanks. After cutting and shaping the piece on the bandsaw and belt sander, I had a template I could use for all the rest. Then I simply traced the outline of the template onto each of the blanks and cut out the rough shape of each one on the bandsaw.

The next step was to use the router to trim each one down the exact same shape. I planned to use dowelling to hold the different parts of the block together, so I drilled a couple of holes in the template where I thought they made the most sense, and then made a little assembly line.

I'd start by attaching the template to a blank using double-sided carpet tape:

Then I'd take them over to the drill press and drill out the dowel holes, using the ones in the template as guides:

Then I'd put in a couple of pegs, just to give them a little more stability, and run them through the flush-trim bit on the router table:

Then I'd take out the dowels, prey them apart, and repeat the whole process with the next blank. It actually worked really, really well - except that my router bit was ridiculously dull, and I wound up getting quite a bit of tear-out and burn marks, especially in the corners and at the top of the curves. I thought there was something wrong with my technique at first, but when I went back to put a little round-over on the edges (with a brand new bit), it was smooth as silk. Fortunately, the belt sander was still set up and I managed to get the worst of the burns and other marks out. Then it was just sanding it all smooth with the random orbital and a little elbow grease.

Somewhere in there, I also managed to make the cuts in the fat ends for the smaller knives.

For finishing, I found some really nice salad bowl wax at Lee Valley, and put on a couple coats of that:

And then it was time for assembly, and that's where the project hit a bit of a snag. See, I had planned to use spacers around the dowels to keep the parts at the right distance from each other, but I could not for the life of me find anything that worked. I could have used rubber washers, but Crappy Tire wanted $3 for two of them and I needed something like 30 of the damn things.

I also wasn't completely sold on the dowels being strong enough to hold the rack together. So I found some more strips of cherry, cut them down to size, and then cut dadoes in the bottom of each piece. That way I could glue the pieces in place, with the right spacing, along with a few screws for the hell of it.

As it turned out, I wound up not being able to put the dowels in after all. Something about some screws being in exactly the wrong place and totally in the way and the damn holes being a little too small anyway.

But hey! It works, and I think it looks pretty snazzy:

Lots of room for expansion, too.