I couldn't find a knife block I really liked that was big enough for all the stuff we wanted to keep in one, so I designed and printed my own. Final dimensions are 23.5cm across, 17.1cm front to back, and a total of 25.7cm tall! It's been in our kitchen for about six months at this point with no complaints from housemates, that feels like enough time for UAT that I feel confident in publishing it for others to print as well.

There are three separate sections, intended to be filled with bamboo skewers of length 15, 20 and 25cm. For 3mm width skewers, you'll need about a thousand of the 25cm ones, another thousand of the 20cm ones, and I think about 600 of the 15cm ones. I recommend looking for a way to buy bamboo skewers in bulk and budgeting for them before 3D printing anything - without looking too hard or wanting to wait for weeks, I spent close to AU$100 all up on the skewers to fill this thing. Alternatively, you could model and print your own bespoke inserts to fit your specific knives - this would be cheaper, but not look as cool.

The three sections are to hold different sized items. The top section will very comfortably fit four chef's knifes and bread knives, the middle section is the same overall width and fits shorter knives, and then the smallest section we use for scissors and paring/peeling knives. The jaunty offset between each section is mainly to look good, although I settled on a layout that makes sure the unusual offset sections are still big enough to be used.

The block is printed in two parts, the base and the shroud. The shround itself is only 24.5cm tall and sits on a raised outline within the base - this is to get enough height for the skewers in the largest section to not rise above the top edge of the block. The walls are 3mm thick so the whole thing feels quite solid and sturdy. Print solid for best results.

Use two different colours for a suave, modern look. I used Bambu's Burgundy PLA-CF for the shroud and PET-CF for the base, mainly because that's what I had on hand - I really love the burgundy colour in contrast with the tan skewers, and check out the close-up photo of the textures! You'll have to make your own decision about what material you'd want in your kitchen and holding your knives. I recommend matte finish filaments or something like a CF infill that will help to disguise layer lines.

The parts should fit together with minimal movement, but you will absolutely want to glue them together - I painted two-part epoxy around the edge and along the raised parts of the base - and you should always pick the whole thing up by the base, never by the shroud, just in case. (Nevermind that it's full of cutting instruments, you don't want to pick thousands of differently-sized skewers off your kitchen floor!)