Stainless Magnetic Knife Storage

There's been some good posts over the years on knife safety and storage.

Going back to my recent post on the drawer handle there was a good solution for knife edge control, which was some nice home-made leather sheaths. I would have liked to try my hand at a new skill, but our knives are already too long for the drawers.

Back at the beginning Jim and Jerry respectively pulled off a neat integrated knife block: Custom knife rack and butcher block
Each was something within my wheelhouse and blends nicely with the galley itself. But... I didn't want to give up any top shelf or bin storage space (as narrow as it was). Jim's looked like the individual slots were custom for each knife's shape and length. I thought this could be a future problem for either version if I lost one or broke it and couldn't replace it with an identical one. I also wasn't sold on the idea of a block as they have the potential to be less sanitary if one is in a rush and inadvertently puts away a dirty knife. Which can happen in the dark, or at a lunch stop without a full-on dish-washing session.

Someone else (forget who) toyed with a hatch-mounted knife-block prototype but for some (or multiple) reasons it didn't work out. I suspect that the weight and positioning were detrimental to the overall ergonomics.

Despite this I looked at the inside hatch surface as a location and considered magnetic mounts running vertically between the hatch ribs. This isn't impossible. The curvature of the hatch is minimal over the 8" and there are ways to support the magnetic bars so that you are not relying solely on the 3M tape, and you aren't putting tiny screws into paneling and possibly through the outer skin. (PM me if you are interested in going this route and I can draw you up my wood-working solution. It involves a couple narrow wooden brackets screwed into the ribs. An 8" scrap piece of a rib from the CI factory, ripped would be perfect. I did have a nice contrasting piece of Ipe or Purpleheart ready to go.)

Ultimately I was encouraged to go with Karen's simpler suggestion. It involves a 16" stainless magnetic bar https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0C391DBLJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details that I cut in half with my mini cut-off tool:

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The magnetic bar (I discovered) is loose inside the SS square tube. The stainless cut was only slightly scorched, but cleaned up OK on the disc sander and with a metal file on the corners.

I cut the magnet slightly shorter than the tube, stuffed it back in, and packed the side voids and end with JB Weld 2-part putty:

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The back side of the 16" bar has 2 slide-on screw holes (now just one on the end of each mini-bar) and also accommodates the supplied full-width thin 3M tape (see above).

I mounted them vertically with a 2 inch space between them, and right to the top of the galley wall. A paper template is supplied so you can get the screw hole placement just right. I set the screw to allow a tiny bit of play so I could slide it on without the 3m tape engaging, got it vertical and then pressed. You don't get much of a second chance:

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If you didn't use 2 bars the knives would pivot due to the weight of the handles, since these bars are commonly employed in a horizontal orientation with the knives vertically. Any further apart and smaller knives wouldn't span the distance. #6 x 1/2" flatheads (not supplied) fixed the top ends. The 3M supplied tape is more than sufficient to fix the bottom ends. In fact I was shaking the trailer trying to get them off. The urethane coating provides an excellent substrate for the 3M. The knives themselves will likely withstand a lot of bouncing before they start to slide down, but they certainly won't fall off. Not road-tested yet though.

You could do this over the stove area but you are relegated to bars of only 5" in length. 3 or 4 bars (requiring 2 kits) however would be plenty of real estate for most people. If you're short and already have difficulty reaching what is on the stove, that could be a non-starter. Actual length of each of mine was 7 1/4" each.

I like the idea that if you do put away a dirty knife, it's easy to clean up, and they're handy. And not lurking in the cutlery drawer ready to bite.

I still may do the hatch mount, as we have lots of other long-handled metal utensils still jammed in the drawer. If I did, I would have to go with an 18" or 20" bar and cut it down. The 16" I got was actually 15" and change and didn't quite span the the gap between the two ribs.

 

Here's the hatch-mounted version, but decided to do an all-wood instead:

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These are the unfinished components:

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The woods are Peruvian Walnut, Jatoba and an inlay I had laying around that matched fairly well. The rare earth magnets are 1 1/4" dia. It's a little tight drilling and screwing into the hatch ribs. The arch of the hatch was negligible and didn't have to be taken into account.

There's other ways to inlay magnets of different shapes; I happened to have a bunch of these so that's what I went with. They're certainly strong enough; I let the point of the Forstner just penetrate the dado for the inlay and stopped. That left enough meat, but it was thin enough to not reduce the pull of the magnets.