I tried to mimic the knife block Wüsthof 7262, and this is what I came up with. To minimize the number of dowels needed, I let all joints that aren’t visible be attached to a solid wood instead of dowels. The knife block holds knives vertically, 28 cm long in one direction and 24cm in the other.
The measurements need to be very precise for this kind of build to work, a lot of holes has to line up, and all should be parallel. Pallets used are heat treated pallets used for shipping plywood, with beams in beech.