Bespoke Walnut Knife Box with Unique Incorporated Magnetic Knife Rack
A bespoke knife rack to fit inside a bespoke wooden box. This is something you are going to want to take a moment to read thoroughly. A bespoke commission what tested our skill and craftsmanship to the limit!
This is it… A solid American Black Walnut knife storage box with integrated magnetic knife stand.
Let me spell this out for you…
A customer rang me and said, “I have bought some very expensive Japanese Knives in London. I am going to ask the shop to send them to you, as I want you to make me a box to put them in – A very special box – can you do it?”
“Yes, of course!” we said.
When the knives turned up… WOW! They were very petty!
The customer then said, ‘I have seen your knife stands, they are beautiful, can you make one of these for me too please? A magnetic wooden knife racks, one large enough to hold 8 knives, all different shapes and sizes.’
‘Yes, of course,’ we said.
So, we can make the wooden knife racks and we can also make bespoke wooden boxes. Both in Walnut as requested. So far so good.
Bespoke Wooden Knife Racks
Then the customer asks, ‘Can you possibly make the knife stand fit inside the box – can you do that?’
….errr? yes… of course we can….???
We never like to say no, as there is always a solution to the problem.
So, now the biggest question, how do you make a knife rack, to hold 8 knives fit inside a box??? And to make things more difficult, there were restrictions in the design. The box had to be easy to carry, no larger than a briefcase. The customer also liked the knife stand with knives on both sides, so the stand was not too large once set up on the counter.
So… as you can imagine, 8 knives in a line is too wide. A knife stand doesn’t fit into a box very easily, especially with knives on either side. So we began to run through the ways to go about making this…
1 – Make the box to fit around the knife stand…? Nope! – The knives have to be secure when traveling.
2 – Make the box to have two parts, one with the knives in somehow and the other side with the rack in…? Nope! – far too big and bulky.
On an on we thought!! Then after many sketches and designs later…
The knife stand separates into two parts, each half then go into either side of the knife box that has a central opening. However, our knife stand is made from two pieces joined together but they are glued together and it has a base to stop it falling over when placing and taking knife off of it. (Getting there though)
Top Quality Magnetic Knife Block
See our standard wooden magnetic knife block in oak:
So we continued…
‘So… we make the base come off but when it is attached to the stand it will still be strong enough to support the stand…’
‘How…?’
‘Make it from smaller pieces that can come off and be stored easily.’
‘Ok, that bit is sorted. So we then make the stand separate into 2 parts so it can go inside the box…’
‘How…? The big problem is, how do you keep a powerful magnetic knife block stay together if made from two halves, when you are removing and placing very sharp knives against the magnetic surfaces and not come apart?’
‘Easy… make it stick together magnetically – using small round magnets in the corners to hold it together!’
‘How do you then get it apart once it is stuck together…?’
‘Ok… we make a finger recess groove so you can get your finger in and pull it apart!’
‘Will people be able to see this finger groove when the stand is assemble?’
No – we will have it underneath the stand so no one can see it once it is together and standing on the counter.’
…and so on…!
So once we ended up with 2 halves of a knife stand and two small feet. The finial question was – How does this stay in the box and at the same time secure the knives?
And this is how we did it:
You start with the knife stand on the counter top. Looking fabulous!
You then remove the knives from the stand…
Once done, you then remove the feet…
You then turn the stand over and underneath you find the finger recess groove so you can pull the two halves apart…
Here is the inside of one portion of the knife stand. The strips of timber are hiding the magnetic strip that hold the knives. The silver discs are the magnets that hold both halves together. Note the small recess area…
Yes, you guessed it. This is for the feet. They fit inside the stand before it goes into the box so they are not loose and could move around and damage the knives. Two feet in total, one inside each half of the stand…
There is a small walnut rail we fitted inside the box, the knife rack half fits up against this to stop it sliding around…
With this in place, you then put the knives back on. Obviously the box we made had to be tall enough to fit the stand and also allow the knives to lay inside, attached to the rack being held securely by the magnets…
The box naturally had to also long enough to take the long knives like the 12” bread knife and chef knife…
This is the other half, as you can see, it made no difference to the size or style of the knives, they all had to fit once on the rack or in the box…
Just a an extra precaution, we installed a walnut rail with foam underside to fix in place to secure the knives and rack down once ready to close the box and. The knives are securely stuck down by magnets to the rack, but this ensures the knives can’t rotate or slide around whilst the box is in motion…
As you can see, the knives and rack stay in position. Even the littlest knife. The whole thing was very secure…
The foam, thought you can’t see it, once in place, offers a snug support to the knives. Obviously, timber could potentially scratch the blades pretty surfaces…
And here it is, the finished result. A very proud moment for all of us. A team effort from start to finish! I think everyone in the workshop was involved in one way or another with this bespoke box and knife rack…
As you can see… One seriously stunning bespoke knife box, with removable knife stand for 8 Japanese knives as requested. I love it when a product we make, be it a one-off, looks this good!!
The walnut box, like all of our personalised wooden memory boxes and toy boxes, was constructed using solid timber and dovetail joints. The hinges we used were brass butt hinges.
Then we finished the walnut box with aged brass latch fitting. A simple yet elegant final touch.
A very nice looking box with a very practical unique knife stand concealed inside – Amazing!!
You can take a look at our entire of selection of wooden knife holders here.