Phil’s Knife Block – Viewer Project
And here’s the last in our knife block series. And what a knife block it is! This one was submitted by Phil. Let’s check it out:
The rain finally ceased long enough for me to apply the finish on a knife block I made for my daughter and new son-in-law. I’m in my second year of woodworking and this was my first attempt (and could very well be my last) in spraying lacquer. The base is made from scraps of hard maple and the fingers are made of cherry. Two coats of sanding sealer and three coats of lacquer were applied and removed and applied again at least three times before I decided to either hand it over to my daughter or roast marshmallows over it. My photography is as bad as my finishing techniques, so hopefully it helped to hide some of the flaws. I appreciate all the information from you and the people who have shared their projects on The Wood Whisperer, as most of what you see was acquired knowledge from your website.
Check out Phil’s website. He makes a few cool items like the Picnic Stick and the Soda Skirt.
Devin’s Knife Block – Viewer Project
This week, we have another set of “themed” posts. I recently created the Popular Woodworking knife block as a Guild project, and I received a few emails from folks who either made knife blocks before or were inspired by the project. This particular one was submitted by Devin.
I originally learned of this style of knife block from this site. While reading the comments on his page I stumbled across this site (there are some nice pieces in there) and that was when I decided I needed to make one of these myself.I used Sketchup to get some ideas down and then made a quick prototype to ensure that the knives would stay in place with a 45 degree angle and to ensure that the size looked right in the kitchen.
I’ve used Maple and Walnut on this piece, finished with a couple coats of Watco’s Danish Oil, I’ll be applying two coats of poly or varathane in a couple days. There are over 1800 skewers in the main section alone. The bottom section is for steak knives and as a last minute addition I decided to add the slot for a pair of scissors.
I had grossly underestimated the amount of fiddling around that walnut trim was going to cause. If I were to make another one of these I think I would simplify the design, maybe use nicer wood rather than try to design interesting elements into it. I really struggled with all the miters, cutting them accurately was easy enough but getting them to stay in place while clamping was a real challenge (and I really don’t like challenges or surprises after I’ve applied glue to wood).
The Mother Of All Cutting Boards – Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from Ed. He writes:
I just finished the Mother of All Boards…MOAB, we’re calling it…and here are the post-install pictures. My wife’s a gourmet cook and we built her a new kitchen. We used stock cabinetry and some granite on the sink-side, but she wanted a run of end-grain walnut butcher-block countertops on the stove-side of the operation. About forty square feet, I think. I got a $3,000 quote, thought “that’s ridiculous,’ and…well, you’re a bright guy, you know all about that particular road to hell. Actually, it was kind of fun. Scratching around for notes on technique was what led me to your site. I found (and enjoyed) your cutting board video and decided to adapt your technique.
Here’s a run-down of my process:
1) Mill out a bunch of 19″L X 1″H X 2″W pieces (my hardwood supply’s 4/4 is actually about 9/8)
2) Mill out a second bunch of 19″L X 1″H X 1″W pieces
3) Join one 1″W piece to 5 2″W pieces, making an edge-grain board
4) Thickness plane these edge-grain boards to about 15/16
5) Slice the edge-grain boards to 2 1/16″ (each board yields about 8
slices of end-grain)
6) Join the end-grain into tiles, alternating the 1″W piece from left
to right to yield a checkerboard
7) Square the tiles and join them into larger blanks (or a big hollow
square, in the case of the cooktop insert) in a pipe-clamp press.
Then came the conundrum. There are four big blanks in these countertops, and I knew that thicknessing them was going to be a pain. My first thought was a 36″ drum sander, but I wound up going to my buddy’s high-end mantel shop, http://mantelsofyesteryear.com, and using his CNC router instead because I was worried about scorching and snipe on the sander. The CNC routing was really interesting. We spent a Saturday thicknessing and dimensioning these things, and the end result was a set of blanks that were precisely squared, dimensioned, and rounded over on the edges.
Vital stats. These countertops are 1 7/8″ thick. I used about 130 BF of walnut and 2 1/2 gallons of Titebond III. They’re finished with food-grade mineral oil. And they weigh about three hundred thousand pounds! I couldn’t have done this project without Jet parallel-jaw clamps or a Freud crosscutting blade. Or without the Wood Whisperer, for that matter…thinking through your process was what made me see that there was larger potential. So thanks again.
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