I Come To Carve Caesar, Not To Bury Him

What do you get for a foodie Classics professor?

I dunno. Maybe a new tie or something.

Or maybe something else. I had to make something for someone this year, what with all the technology I've got kicking around now. The recipient ended up being the older brother. Something I've wanted to do is to make a Caesar-shaped knife block so you can stab him in the back every time you put your knives away. However, the best possible design, with a fully 3d Caesar, requires a 360-degree scan of a statue or something similar, and I don't have that. And at any rate, I'd need to do the design in chunks with the 3d printer. So I'm falling back on something simpler.

The body of this thing is several sections of birch plywood with 1/8" grooves of various widths routed diagonally through it. One was made with the CNC machine, the other with a router. Not sure which method I prefer. I get more control with the CNC, but working with the router doesn't take too long and doesn't tie up my computer for hours at a time.

The face is a piece of marble floor tile I got at the hardware store for about a buck per square foot. The design comes from an old coin. It's engraved using a v-bit and cuts a mere 0.02" into the tile. Came out rather nicely, I think.

Once all the pieces were made, it was easy to glue all the wood bits together, sand them down, and attach the marble with some all-purpose construction adhesive. Knives fit into the grooves in opposite directions, and with the stand, it really puts the "stab" into "stabat."