Blade Draws

Hi All,
When I started scroll sawing, finding somewhere to store my blades wasn't an issue because I only had the few blades that came with the saw. However, every time I started a new project I had to purchased more and more blades to suit the size of the wood I was going to be cutting.So I soon had lots of blades ranging from size 1 to size 12 with 12 being the biggest. You may think it is obvious that size 12 is the biggest, but that rule doesn't alway apply. With fishing hooks, for instance, the higher the number is, the small the hook is. You could hang a dead pig on size 1 hook, but you could thread a size 26 through the eye of a needle.

Anyway, with my blades in danger of getting into a dire mess, I decided to make a small set of draws to keep them in. And while I was at it, I would include a draw for my junior hacksaw blades and my Stanley knife blades.

I cut the main structure from a piece of 15mm pine and made the drawer fronts and sides from 6mm pine strip. The bases of the drawers were cut from 3mm plywood. The wood I used was all stuff lying around my workshop, so I guess I made the whole thing for free. Everything was cut on my scroll saw so there wasn't any hard work involved in the project, which is great because sawing a lot of wood by hand is very tedious.

Originally, I had intended on using my pyrography iron to burn the blade sizes onto each drawer but I decided against the idea. The draw knobs were kindly made by my wife from clay and I painted them blue.

Here is a picture of the finished set of drawers.

Considering I didn't take too much time over making this item I am pleased with the results. It looks good and it is useful, so in my book that counts as a success.

Another good thing that came out of the project was my first encounter with 'sanding sealer'. I first heard about this product almost fifty years ago when I was a young lad who enjoyed making model air planes from balsa wood. The sad thing is that the only money I had in the world, in those days, came from my paper round, so I only bought necessities and 'sanding sealer' was deemed a luxury too far.

As it happens nothing much has changed in my life and I still don't like to fritter money away, but seeing as there was a lot of open end grain on the pine I was using, I decided to give it a go.

The result was brilliant. I used it after the final sanding, it really does improve the finish. If I'd known how good it was all those years ago I might have risked thruppence on a bottle.