Saw Blade Storage

It was getting to be very aggravating every time I wanted to get my dado blades out of the box they came in. It never failed the chipper that I would need would be on the bottom of the stack and I would have to dig them all out to get to that one blade. I also figured it would be nice to have a place to store all my 10 inch table saw blades as well. 

I started scouring the internet for different ideas and there were lots of them out there. I saw this particular one from the wood magazine website and really liked the design, so I printed it off and went to work. 

I have plenty of small plywood scraps lying around the shop so this would also be a good opportunity to use some of those up. I had two pieces that would be about an 1" 1/2 short of what the plans called for, but I figured from looking at the plans that it wouldn't really be a problem. So the first thing to do was to square up the pieces and cut them into the sides and back for the holder.

 Once that was done I taped the sides together and laid out all the marks for the 1/4 holes and and drilled them. The plans called for the slots to be at a 60 degree angle, I found that my 30/60/90 triangle came in really handy for this task. Once all the lines were drawn it was over to the band saw to make the cuts for the blade slots. This was a fairly simple task to do. I also marked out a small radius at the top of the sides and cut that out mostly for looks.

 The next step was to sand off all the points and sharp edges on the sides and I used a combination of hand sanding and my spindle sander for this.

The plans called for dowels to be drilled in the back and sides to hold the shims on the back and the throat plates on the side but, I opted to not use the side dowels as I didn't wanna store my throat plates there. I drilled out the hole in the back and cut the dowel on the band saw and also cut a notch in the dowel to keep the shims from possibly sliding off. I just glued the dowel in with wood glue.

 To attach the two sides I pre drilled four 2" screws and counter sunk them into the back also using wood glue for a good bond.

 I wanted a way to hold my riving knives as I have two of them for my saw, one fore thin and one for full kerf blades. I used a piece of crap 2/4 and drew the finger opening of the riving knife onto the wood. I thin cut out the shape on the band saw and shaped it on the spindle sander. After that I cut a slice off the front and cut some of the material off the remaining piece and then glued the front back on using spring clamps. Once again I sanded the piece smooth on the spindles sander until the riving knife would slip over the piece on the front. I attached the holder to the back of the saw blade holder using drywall screws pre drilled from the back side.

Once the sides were attached I cut two small pieces of french cleat and attached them to my french cleat wall. The plans actually called for a screw at the top and bottom to be screwed into a stud but I opted for the french cleat system because I already had that setup.

 All that's left is to store all your blades along with the shims and the riving knife. I am really gonna like this system of blade storage, it will be much easier access than what I had before.