Knife Display Case

My family started an unspoken tradition a couple of years ago of giving my brother some sort of pocket knife as a Christmas gift. It got to the point where he had to specifically ask us to stop giving him knives each year. So, this year I decided it would be appropriate to build him something to store all of the knives we’d previously given him. My inspiration for this design was a Wood Whisperer YouTube video and plans from Marc’s website. I didn’t vary from his plans much, except for deciding to use dovetails instead of box joints and not tapering the outside of the case or lid.

I decided to use walnut for case, lid, and supports with red oak accent trim on the underside of the lid and red oak veneer plywood for the bottom. I’ve started to really like this wood combination for projects. I used resawn stock for the case so that the grain would wrap around the outside. Since I used dovetails, my brother will probably never notice this feature, but it made me happy. I used a table saw to dimension the pieces, but I did all of the joinery with hand tools.

For the hardware, I used Brusso hinges with a built-in stop and Horton Brasses for the half-mortise lock and escutcheon. This was my first project with nice brass hardware, and it turns out that people weren’t exaggerating when they said to be extra careful with brass screws. Those mistakes aside, I’m really happy with how this project turned out. The finish was a mixture of poly, mineral spirits, and BLO (Lost Art Press “Shop Finish”) with a coat of paste wax afterwards.

-- Brett, Georgia