-
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.
I've just been looking at those blocks. How do you find that knife block? Can you get the knives off one-handed or do you need to hold it down? Do you have to lift them upwards to get them off or can you pull them outwards?