a chip off the old block

Example: “Just like his father, he fixes everything himself; he's a chip off the old block.”

Origin: A chip of wood or stone is made of exactly the same material as the block it came from. Earlier forms were "chip of the same block" in the 17th century, used for example by the preacher Robert Sanderson in a sermon. In 1781, after the young William Pitt's first speech in Parliament, Edmund Burke said he was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself, the old block being his father, William Pitt the Elder. The version with "old block" became usual in the 19th century.