"Knifely Done!"

To borrow from King Lear, because of habitat destruction, pollution and overfishing, salmon are “more sinned against than sinning.”

But this time, it was the salmon’s fault.

Last October, Sprouts Market had frozen filets of wild caught Pacific salmon on sale. Because the filet was three pounds and frozen, I wanted to cut it into single servings and needed a hefty knife.

My daughter Lily kindly lent me her large chef’s knife for this task.

However, despite her generosity, I realized I could not bother her each time a big kitchen job appeared. I looked for a larger knife and soon became disappointed. I would either have to buy a set with knives that I did not need, or buy a single, expensive knife.

Then, I remembered that a large chef’s knife was in our kitchen drawer. It was part of a set in an Omaha Steaks gift order that my mother had sent us some years ago. Trouble was, the hinges, the plastic pieces on each side of the knife handle, had come off. Why this part of a knife is called a “hinge” is a mystery.

A few weeks later, I was at C & E Lumber , where they cut down a walking stick to better fit my stride. On a whim, I asked Matthew, who cut down the stick, if the store sold hardwoods. He took me into a bay of one of the buildings and it was Christmas for hardwood aficionados! They had walnut. They had cherry. They had oak. They had some kind of maple. They even had exotic tropical hardwoods.

After seeing all this beautiful wood, I thought it would be great to rehabilitate the knife by putting hardwood hinges on it.   And after this idea surfaced, I thought the five most dangerous words in carpentry, “How hard could this be?”

After speaking to my friends Greg, Seth, Rob Fitch, Steve and Dennis, I decided that putting on red oak hinges would be doable. On YouTube, I found a video with a Frenchman, who may have had too much caffeine, showing how to do the work. And if it’s on the Internet, it has to be true - - right?

The Frenchman advised cutting the hinges and then securing them to the handle with epoxy and rivets through the wood and the handle.

Rob Selover and the people at Different Drummer's Kitchen told me that a typical chef’s knife has a three-quarter inch thick grip, consisting of the metal and the left and right hinge.

Victoria at C & E Lumber cut a piece of oak for me. Holding the oak meant that the idea was advancing. I could gaze adoringly at the wood but it was now in the house and that was one less excuse for not moving ahead.

Since the board was a bit more than three-quarters of an inch thick, I thought I could cut it in half and the two pieces - - combined with the metal of the handle - - would equal three quarters of an inch.

Using a handheld circular saw, I cut the two pieces.

The first try: A cut with a hand-held circular saw.

And then with the help of my friend Dean, I used a jigsaw to shape each hinge. The shaping worked well. But the two pieces were not the same thickness and that would have resulted in a cock-eyed grip.

The first try at the hinges.
The knife and hinges are resting on Dean's jigsaw case.

When I mentioned this to my friend Steve, he kindly offered to help me, by cutting the wood to a consistent thickness with his table saw.

No brass posts, like those in the YouTube video, were available. Then, Kevin at Robinson’s Hardware showed me a fastener called a “screw post.” Although the knife handle did not have holes through which to put a fastener, the screw post could be tightened to add some tension to keep the handle and hinges together.

The knife handle.  Note the lack of holes for a fastener.

The screw posts were an inch long, requiring thicker hinges. But that has made the knife easier to hold, in the way that those OXO “Good Grips” kitchen tools fit more comfortably in the hand.

To avoid having two uneven pieces, Steve suggested cutting a long strip of wood half and inch thick and then using a jigsaw to cut the pieces to the shape of the handle.

The red oak cut to one half inch
and ready to be cut to fit the knife

Steve’s idea worked well, but then I cut one hinge too close and it was back to the table saw and jigsaw to make a replacement.

We used half of the amount in a Gorilla Glue epoxy package to secure the hinges to the handle. Because so much glue was used, I used three clamps to hold the pieces in place and let the glue cure for 36 hours - - longer than the recommended 24 hour curing.

After the 36 hours elapsed, I used a six-inch disk sander on a drill and smaller pieces of sandpaper with a sanding block to shape the hinges. If I do this again, I will get a five inch disk for the first sanding, to get into more of the tight spots.

Top: the knife with the rough cut hinges ready to be sanded.
Bottom: a second knife of the same size, showing the plastic hinges.

I planned to start sanding with medium sandpaper and finish with a finer grade Steve suggested using only fine sandpaper. Even with fine sandpaper, it is sobering how quickly a person can remove a lot of wood. If I had used medium sandpaper, I might have ground away half the hinge thickness or done something equally as blockheaded.

Steve set up a drill press with a specialized bit to countersink the screw post heads. For some reason, none of the bits in his set were exactly the same width as the screw post heads. As a workaround, I covered the heads with crazy glue, to prevent water or food material from getting between the post and the sides of the holes. The result did not look as attractive as planned, but hopefully the glue will keep out the water and debris.

My friend Dennis told me about a product designed to protect wood, that is food-safe. I will get that item in the future; for now, I brushed vegetable oil on the hinges to help protect them from the water.

Someone suggested discarding the knife and getting a new one. That would have been easier and the finished product would have looked more put together. With drive time and the cost of materials, a mass-produced knife may have been cheaper in time and effort.

But rehabilitating the knife taught me a lot about woodworking - - and was another reminder of how friends rally round and help!

Thanks to Steve for the pun that is this post's headline.