A few of us over at the Woodturner's Resource forums were playing around with designs for a wooden letter opener, and this is what I ended up with. You can see that forum thread here:
http://www.woodturnersresource.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1213567952/0
These Maple openers are 6" long, and turned from 3/4" square stock. Finish is wipe-on Polyurethane. The profile for the blade was turned, then waste cut away with the bandsaw and shaping done with a belt sander, carving knife, file, and sandpaper to give a blade thickness of about 3/16".
The signature is a chemical transfer from a printing on regular paper from my old laser printer, hooked up to my Mac.