Cutting knife slot in piece of wood

Hello,

I have a 2.5 inch by 18 inch by 7/8 inch thick piece of wood. I was hoping to cut a slot down the middle 12 inches for holding knifes. Has anyone ever done this and lived, or should I just take the knifes and chop off the ends of my fingers and save time. The wood is veneered (part of a store bought cabinet set) so I was hoping to not have to cut and glue the pieces back together.

Thanks in advance

Larry C

Reply to
L C
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Bandsaw down the middle, as you stated, would be easiest.

Maybe you could use a scabbard chisel. Or, use a biscuit joiner or slot cutter to cut the slot in the front, and then hollow it out on an unexposed face to the depth you need. Is it going to be visible on all sides?

JP

Reply to
Jay Pique

A little more help please. What do you mean by a slot? Are you talking about a slot in the top of the board so that a knife or two can sit on edge into the slot? Or... are you talking about being able to insert a knife into a slot that runs down the center of the piece such that the knife blade completely fits into it like most common knife blocks?

I'm imagining that you simply want to stand the knife blade into a slot as if you were going to slice something that was laying at the bottom of the slot. The 7/8 thickness makes your piece pretty useless for the scabbard type of knife holder. It would only hold one knife and your post uses the plural. If this is the case, you could plunge a circular saw into the stock somewhat short of one end, and run it all the way to the other end. Set the cut for 1/2" or so and you could get three, maybe four knives in it side by side.

Don't really see any other way to do anything useful with a piece of stock that small.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Knife slots are tricky. The block design I use is a great slab of tree, chopped into slices and then re-assembled. While the slices are separate I machine each face to have a step in it (one pass on the table saw), but the steps in opposing faces aren't in the same place. Re-assembling now leaves a slot behind. These sots are also separate and parallel, which I think gives a better result than one long slot with the knives bumping into each other.

As to your slot, then you could saw the board in half, then re-assemble it with spacers. This could be done with almost any sort of saw, even by hand, as it's only 2 1/2" wide.

When you re-assemble it, use little pegs (chopstick) every couple of inches to separate the knives from each other and also to stop them tipping over.

On the whole though, I probably wouldn't use this piece of timber. It's _hard_ to make things out of one piece of found timber! It's generally easier to find cheap timber, lots of it, then design with a free hand and no thought for economy.

There's also the risk that if this stuff is veneered and modern, it's probably only chipboard underneath.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

This is what I mean

A piece that has a slot all the way through so the knives will go through it and hang down.

kind of like this

__|__|__|______ | |

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Reply to
L C

Simple - use any saw. A handsaw, a circular saw, a table saw - whatever you have access to. Just determine your depth of cut and set the saw to that depth. If you do it with a hand saw you'll have to ensure you hold the saw so that the cutting edge is parallel with the surface of the block and simply cut to your defined depth.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Correction on my last post - brain fart.

A router would be a good solution to this problem. Use a 1/8" straight bit and simply cut the slots. You will probably want to do them in passes - increasing the depth of cut with each pass.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

If you don't have a router, you can even do it with a drill and a coping saw or a jigsaw, just like you were cutting out a long, skinny rectangular hole.

You can also plunch down through the wood with a circular saw, or up through it with a tablesaw. The ends of the slot won't be perfectly verticle though; you'd have to finish them up with a handsaw or a narrow chisel.

Reply to
Josh

I did this once, but it was to lay in a drawer. Just used my dovetail saw, which made a pretty narrow cut. Marked depth of cut on both sides, and simply sawed to the line. The dovetail saw is nice and stiff, so it was easy to keep it vertical.

Reply to
professorpaul

Assuming you want several parallel slots of varying lengths and widths to, each, accommodate a particular knife blade, I would suggest drilling holes through at the respective end points of each slot.

Use a bit as small as you can but large enough to allow a coping saw blade to pass through that you might attach the frame and saw through to the opposite end of each slot.

Then, working with a thin file (fingernail file?) widen and square up each slot appropriately.

Reply to
Gooey TARBALLS

When I made one to lay flat in a drawer I cut the slots positioned as I wanted them with a thin (1/16"+) blade on a radial saw. The cuts *were* slots; i.e, not all the way through. I then glued in splines (of the same wood) from the top to fill the top leaving enough slot for the particular knife.

Reply to
dadiOH

Rip the board in half. Dado the slots in one half. Glue back together.

Dave

Reply to
Teamcasa

The user requested a solution of not doing this.

It looks like the user wished to cut a long hole connecting the 7/8" sides. It seems to me that the way to do this is with a plunge technique, either with a router, as several folks have suggested, or a table saw.

Sounds like a TS would be easiest: Set the fence of a TS to 3/8" figure out a safe way to plunge the piece of wood onto the blade. Run the wood along the slot to the block stop you've put in place. Flip the wood over and cut the other side of the slot the same way. Use a hand saw to remove the material left at the ends of the slot left by what the blade could not reach due to the curve.

The hardest bit of this, assuming you have a table saw, is probably safely plunging the wood for the first cut. Anyone more experienced have any ideas?

Reply to
Philip Lewis

Two *larger*pieces. Dado slots for knive. THEN cut off for half width. Glue together. I did this out of oak, then screw that from the back to a pine board [detailed it you wish], then screwed that to the wall back of the cutting center.

Reply to
Guess who

OK, method 2. Same thing with two halves, but one long dado rather than individual for each knife. The safe way ...Dado across the piece, leaving little bits not dadoed for support, and they are easily chiselled out and lightly sanded. Join the two halves when done.

Method 3. Router again. Set up a guide to avoid sudden mistakes, and rout half way up into the wood, nibbling to avoid stress etc. Turn over and repeat. With the guides and not biting off too much at one time it's safe enough to slide through by hand.

Reply to
Guess who

What's wrong with a drill press? Chuck up the appropriately sized brad-point bit, set a fence for the proper distance from the edge of the board and go to town. It might take a little while and you'll have to clean up the cut with a coping saw or a file, but it should be simple enough to do.

Reply to
Brian Henderson

How about lowering your table saw blade all the way down, clamping the piece of wood to the saw table over the blade, then raising the blade. Move the workpiece & repeat as necessary. If the rounded ends left by the saw blade are a problem, you can square them up with a hand saw or small file.

Another alternative would be to drill 2 small holes 12" (or whatever) apart and cut out the space bewtween them with a scroll saw or jig saw.

Reply to
lwasserm

replying to L C, Holy Smokes wrote: dude just clamp er down friggin drill a hole down it the size you what your width to be maybe drill another one to gow it out frickin stuff a jig saw in until you made your slot the rest is just farkin around getting er as deep as you need helps to have grinders and drill presses and shat to make holes and special tools like grinding shat to make chisels and shat i dunno buddy just fackin look at some shat and do it its a friggin block not a piano

Reply to
Holy Smokes

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

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