The Woodworker & Woodturner – September 2019

PROJECT Oak root knife handles

52 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking September 2019 http://www.getwoodworking.com

WANT NOT

WASTE NOT,

Rescuing some finest-quality Swedish kitchen knives

from the bin, Martin Pim-Keirle strips off the original

plastic handles and turns new ones using pieces of

oak root, which he then polishes to a high shine

1 The knife blades have simple square tangs

I

t is a sad fact of our consumer society

that most people get bored of the things

they own long before they’re worn out. It’s

not unusual for products, especially simple

ones, to be made of far more durable materials

than their short life spans really require, meaning

that landfill sites and recycling centres across the

country are full of perfectly usable ‘stuff’. And

I think there’s something quite pleasing about

resurrecting and reusing what others have

deemed fit only for the bin.

The kitchen knives you see here were being

discarded by a neighbour, and are manufactured

from finest-quality Swedish flat-pack steel. I

neglected to take any ‘before’ photographs, but

if you try to picture the dullest plastic handles

you can imagine, you won’t be far off. However,

the blades themselves aren’t bad: they hold a

good edge and have a nice weight to them. And

their shapes are rather pleasing, or rather, they

will be with some hand-crafted wooden handles

to help them look their best! Acquiring these

knives happened to coincide with my being

given a chunk of extremely well-seasoned oak

root from a fallen tree. I gratefully accepted,

knowing it would probably have some lovely

swirling grain patterning inside, and might

look great as the handle of a knife.

Removing the old handles

The old plastic handles were easily removed

by clamping the blade in a vice and attacking

the handle first with a Stanley knife, then with

a screwdriver, and a hammer plus hardwood

‘chisel’, first splitting the handles with a blade

and then driving them off the tang. The result

was perfectly usable stainless-steel blades

with rough, but quite strong, tangs for fixing.

Oak root is beautiful, but can also be

quite brittle, with grain running in all directions.

Sandwiching the oak around something straight-

grained and strong, in this case a small offcut of