BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 0001 In many kitchens knives are held semi upright in the slots of a knife holder. Sometimes it is required that additional knives be added to the ones originally installed in the knife holder. If the slots are already filled there will not be room for more knives. Thus it may either be necessary to buy another knife holder or store the additional knives in a drawer, neither of these choices may be aesthetically or practically desirable. This invention is a knife holder that allows space for additional knives by having the ability for the holder to expand. There is a relatively hollow box, within which is another box. Both boxes have slots for holding knives in which the spacing of the slots are synchronized such that as the inner box is extended out from the outer box the slots from both boxes match sequentially and are concurrent so that more slots are available to retain knives. The knife blades pass through the slots and the knife handles rest on the slots of the outer box, the inner box, or both simultaneously. In this example the unexpanded knife holder contains 8 slots, while in the expanded stage the knife holder extends to 14 slots.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 0002 This invention, the Expandable Knife Holder, has the ability to expand such that the number of slots available to hold knives in the knife holder can be increased incrementally and made available for more knives. The knife holder is a hollow box with knife slots into which fits another hollow box with knife slots. Each has knife slots that are arranged so that as the inner box is incrementally extended out from the outer box, the slots of the inner box match perfectly, and is in conjunction with those of the outer box no matter how far extended. In this example, in the non-extended stage, there are 8 slots. In the semi extended stage there are slots for 10, and 12 knives, while in the extended stage, in which the inner box is fully extended from the outer box, there are 14 slots available for knives.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 0003 In FIG. 1 the knife holder is partially extended from its full length. A knife protrudes through one of the slots (4) of the outer box (2) and a knife protrudes through a slot in the inner hollow box (1). A finger hole (3), can be used to slide the inner box from within the outer box. For convenient viewing the knife holder rests on an angle (5) from that of a kitchen table. 0004 FIG. 2 shows only 2 extra slots are available from the inner box. 0005 FIG. 3 shows 6 extra slots made available by pulling out the inner box even more 0006 FIG. 4 shows the inner box fully pulled out and away from the outer box. 0007 FIG. 5 shows the inner and outer boxes on their sides. The finger holes are square in shape, the knife slots are in the immediate foreground, and the rest angle of the knife holder is on the top left and right of the boxes.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 0008 A kitchen knife holder is generally a wooden block (2) in which knives rest inside knife slots (4). There are occasions when all the knife slots are being used, yet more knives are desired to those already there. In that case another knife holder would be bought and added to the first knife holder, or the new knives might be put in a drawer. Neither of these choices may prove to be acceptable to the consumer. This invention, the Expandable Knife Holder, is expandable so that more knives can be included in the same knife holder with the original collection of knives. The Expandable Knife Holder is a relatively hollow box (1) within a larger relatively hollow box (2) the slots of the smaller hollow box, as the box is pulled out of the larger hollow box, are in conjunction with and match those of the larger hollow box (FIG. 1). Therefore the Expandable Knife Holder is expandable by increments (FIGS. 2,3,4), i.e. the expansion proceeds not more than is needed at the time. The inner box (FIG. 2) shows only 2 extra slots made available by one increment of extension. FIG. 1 shows 4 extra slots made available by the next increment of extension. FIG. 3 shows 6 extra slots made available by the next increment of extension. Indeed there may yet be a third or more hollow boxes in the smaller hollow box for even greater expandability, and therefore more room for knives and the like in the same Expandable Knife Holder.