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.