DIY Multiple Pill Splitter

I take those "old guy multivitamins" but found that the full pill was actually messing with me, so I take them in a half pill a day. For the last year or so I've been splitting them one at a time using one of those $6 splitters from the pharmacy, but that's a PITA and takes waaaay too long, as I do 4 of those 7-day pill minder things at a time.

The only multiple pill splitter I found for sale online costs $30 on Amazon, so I decided to make my own.

This entire thing is made from scrap cutoff wood I had in the shop, a junk knife, a nut & bolt, some glue, and x2 2" angle brackets. I had everything already but if you bought the angle brackets and a bolt you might spend $2.00. Took me 20 minutes.

Nothing here is specialized - you can use any old chunk of straight, kinda thin metal, you can even put a cutting edge on it by scraping metal on concrete. The only caveat I'd present is that you probably don't want to use a serrated blade, and you probably would want to sharpen something really dull like a butter knife a bit.

If you use an old knife that *isn't* skeletonized like mine is, you might need to drill a suitable hole in it near the point. Keep in mind that a lot of steel knives are hardened, which means you'll need to anneal the point in order to be able to drill the hole easily. If you start to drill and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, that's a good sign that you need to anneal it. Annealing is easy with a torch or for something this small, even a lighter. Look it up.

I like to cook so friends get me kitchen gadgets as gifts. I got this skeletonized paring knife thing (As Seen On TV!) which turned out to be a dud as far as actual cooking, so I used it the blade for my pill splitter.

Basically I mounted two 2" right-angle brackets on a chunk of 1x6 wood spaced such that the knife blade would fit between them, then glued a couple of triangular pieces in place to keep the point of the knife from drawing blood. After that I mounted the knife and measured to see where i would want the blade to land in order to meet the top of a row of pills, measured a sample pill and cut a piece of wood to fit and glued it in place, being sure to leave just a liiiiitle extra room so the pills would move easily in the groove.

I cut & glued two more pieces of wood to form the walls of the groove and that's it.

This one cuts 12 pills at a time easily.

I might add a guide at the handle end of the blade to ensure the pills are cut precisely in half, but it's really not necessary. This is one of those things that's so simple that if you can't get the blade lined up over the pills in the middle, then you really shouldn't be handling sharp objects anyway. :-)

Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.