Sharp side down

[mklotz]

I hesitate to call this a tool. It's another one of those ideas of mine that some might find useful and, although it involves tools, it's a hardly a tool in its own right.

It really bugs me when I lay a knife I've been using down on the bench and it promptly rolls into a position with its edge facing up. It's dangerous and, with blades heavy with respect to the handle the fact that the dull edge of the blade is thicker, and hence heavier, means it happens all too often.

For knives with wooden handles like the top one in the first picture I drill a hole on the edge side of the handle and drive in a short brass plug. This makes the knife self-correcting - lay it down and it will roll into a position with the edge pointing down. A side benefit of this approach is the fact that the knife won't roll off the bench.

Dealing with X-Acto knives is a bit harder. A perfectly cylindrical 5/16" handle means they roll like crazy and although blade location is a bit more random when they stop it points up enough to be a concern. I spent a long time 'gedanken-designing' a way to weight the X-Acto handle. The slug approach doesn't work because the handle is too thin - can't get the slug far enough away from the center to provide enough correction torque. Depleted uranium slug might work but, since I finished my model ICBM, I'm fresh out. A long off-center axial hole filled with lead might work but that's more work than I want to devote to this annoyance.

Finally, one morning in the shower (I do my best work there) it hit me: don't add weight to the handle, use the weight of the handle itself. I took some spongy black stuff from the odds and ends bin, punched a 9/32" hole in it with a gasket punch and punched a 5/8" slug containing the off-center hole out with another gasket punch.

Slipped over the end of the handle, it makes the knife roll to a blade-down position just like its wooden handled big brother. Certainly plastic, wood or aluminum would be more durable but I like the fact that it will compress when I grab the end of the handle.

[PJs]

Depleted Uranium. LOL Good Ideas for an age old problem Marv. A lot of times for pesky often used tools with wooden handles I just sand a small flat on the side I want and it usually gives me a good orientation in my hand. The exacto fix was a nice touch!

Thanks again for lighting a new candle on the "gedanken-designing". Hadn't heard gedanken in years and had to looked it up...CRS. Think I've been doing similar approaches for years. Bounce things around in the brain, flushing out all the pro's/cons & design parameters till the simple elegant falls out...when in doubt go have lunch, or have a shower.

Thanks Marv! ~PJ

[mklotz]

A flat will keep the knife from rolling off the bench but, unless the handle is weighted, it won't necessarily bring the knife automatically to an edge-down rest position when placed unthinkingly on the bench. I tend to get involved in what I'm doing and lay tools down without thinking about tool placement so anything that automatically adjusts position is appreciated.

I think it was Einstein who originated the term "gedankenexperiment". When he was doing his early work on special relativity he imagined himself riding on a light beam at the speed of light - clearly an experiment that could never occur in practice. His deductions about how his view of his surroundings would change on such a ride led to the earliest equations that describe relativity.

I'm fortunate to have a better than average ability to mentally visualize complex geometric relations. I hardly ever make drawings before building something. Sometimes I'll make a simple "fag packet" sketch to work out a dimension but that's about it. I tell my wife that this mental design ability accounts for my vacant stare when waiting somewhere, although the stare is often nothing more than numbing boredom.

[DIYer]

Thanks mklotz! We've added your Knife Handle Plug to our Safety category,
as well as to your builder page: mklotz's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Knife Handle Plug by mklotz

tags: knife

[DIYer]

Thanks mklotz! We've added your Modelling Knife Anti Roll Ring to our Safety category,
as well as to your builder page: mklotz's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Modelling Knife Anti Roll Ring by mklotz

tags: safety, x-acto

[tonyive]

You have to be a Brit or lived in the UK for a long time. Nobody else will know what a "fag packet" sketch is. I can see political correctness rearing its ugly head anytime now. I do like your simple solutions to a potentially dangerous problem.

[mklotz]

You have to be a Brit or lived in the UK for a long time. Nobody else will know what a "fag packet" sketch is. I can see political correctness rearing its ugly head anytime now. I do like your simple solutions to a potentially dangerous problem.

A Brit?! Bite your tongue. Lovely country but not mine.

I lived in Germany for a while in Bremen which was, of course, in the British zone of occupation. Through my work there and in Paris with British colleagues, I picked up a bit of the jargon. However, "fag packet sketch" comes from several of the denizens of a few of the model engineering fora I follow regularly.

[Frank S]

gedanken-designing, having blank stares. Making fag packet sketches and making a few table napkin blue prints was pretty much how me and a friend of mine convinced a friend of his that we could build him an oil drilling rig from the scrap he had laying around back in 1980.
The problem today is when I go off in the Frank zone and get that blank stare, my wife has developed the nasty habit of asking what I am thinking about creating a Kip[ling effect. Which aggravates me to no end.

[ranald]

Beats my LAZY bending the handle a "wee bit".LOL