After 15 plus years of use it occurred to me that it was probably time to get some of my carbide blades sharpened by my local buddies at Ballew Saw & Tool.
However, I had long ago thrown away the box my dado blades came in after building my Blade, Bit & Insert Cabinet (http://lumberjocks.com/projects/61883 ), so I ask the boys at Ballew if they had any suggestions. They thought it was great fun to recommend just tying a string through the arbor holes like a good Hillbilly and toting them on down for sharpening. I just couldn’t do it, let alone buy their recommendation. So I whipped up this simple and efficient carrier.
The first picture is of the newly sharpened dado blade with the top plywood cover removed. The second picture is of the top in place, being held by 2-1/4” carriage bolts and wing nuts over fender washers.
The rounded dowel used for the arbor holes is an item I use a lot in various jigs to index different templates to the master for routing a project. Long ago I’d devised a jig for quickly and uniformly rounding over dowels of any size by using a round over router bit which is half the measurement of the diameter for the dowel being rounded over (i.e., ¼” radius for ½” dowel, 5/16” radius for 5/8” dowel, 3/8” radius for ¾” dowel, etc.).
The third picture is of this dowel round over jig with a loose dowel in the jaws. The jig is placed in the vise on my bench and closed with the dowel flush with the jig top and then routed. The fourth picture is just a close up of the top of the jig. The fifth and sixth pictures are of the jig upside down to show the interlocking “V” blocks that hold the dowel when the bench jaw vise is closed.
Nothing fancy, but it was quick, simple and did the job without resorting to string. This post also gives me a chance to share my jig for rounding over dowel ends.