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You can pull them outwards, but they glide beautifully upwards too. One-handed action for both is fine.
The blocks has what feels like several veins of magnets they aren't over-powering at all - but they do mean knives naturally fall into certain positions. I'd say you can easily put 3 each side without any knife touching another, but if I placed another medium or large knife on this side it would touch another knife.
Bought some knives. They're ok I think