Wooden Knives?

[poolhound]

I have been making up a bunch of cutting and cheese boards from those pool table legs I bought earlier in the year and was thinking about cheese knives or similar. I have seen the various kits for sale where they supply the blades and you turn the handles but they are not very inspiring. I was wondering about making knives totally out of wood. They would be primarily for light duty work such as butter or other spreads and cutting would go as far as cheeses or pates etc. I know from experience that you can create a sharp edge on wood as I have plenty of cuts to prove it so I think the idea is more than viable. Keeping it sharp may be a challenge but for such light duty work I am not sure that's a problem.

Here are my thoughts so far and I wondered if anybody else has tried this or got any other ideas.

1. Make blades or whole knife from denser hardwoods to make and hold an edge
2. Exotics would be a good idea as they are generally very hard and oily nature would prevent drying
3. Could laminate construction much like regular knife with blade/ scales etc.
4. Need to design a specific sharping jig/setup using sandpaper - Hmmm.
5. Simple food safe finish. Could do higher polish on handle for some designs
6. How thick does blade need to be to be rigid, how thin to enable an edge and cutting capability?

Got a lot of projects on the go right now but do plan to start experimenting with this. Will let you know how it goes.

[LinuxRandal]

I would be looking at what woods are currently used in kitchen tools. Exotics make me think of those that I have known that have certain wood allergies, and that isn't something I would want mixing with food. Some of the oily woods, well how will they taste?

[poolhound]

Never thought whether the oily woods would 'taint' anything any more than when used in cutting boards which is pretty common. I was just perusing the Janka list and noticed that Mesquite is actually way up there at 2345 and I have that in abundance here in the desert. Ash, white oak and hard maple are only in the 1300-1400 range. Will have to play around and see what might work.