A while ago I worked at a golf course.
And at some point, while mowing down high grass far beyond the rough (this included stuff like pokeweed, ragweed and sumac trees), the blade broke. I snapped the two foot long steel blade in half. After washing off the equipment, I handed half of the blade to the mechanic. He pondered it for a moment, then said “Boy, when you do things, you do things right!”
A day or two later, I asked him if I could have the blade pieces and he gladly handed them over to me. I had formed an idea to mount them.
First, I needed to make a plaque to put the blade on. I thought of mounting it on oak but the hardware store only had oak in stair treads and wanted a lot of money for it, so I went for cheap pine which is very dent-able, and this was heavy steel. I laid out the blade on the board (carefully) to get an idea of size and how I wanted to mount it. After cutting the board to size, I chamfered the edges with a file, and then stained it. After the stain, I added a few coats of polyurethane.
Now that the plaque was ready, I still had to figure out how to mount the blade to it. I had the layout in mind, but nothing to connect the wood to the steel. While looking for a knife in the kitchen, I found six small neodymium magnets. I tried them and found that they were strong enough to hold each blade piece – as long as the metal wasn’t bumped. I got some bolts whose flat top was the same diameter as the magnets, and did some drilling.

The board with bolts in, with room for magnets – note magnets on the blade piece in the back. 
The nearly finished broken blade plaque 
Inserting the bolts with the magnets into the board 
Drilling wider insets for the nuts on the bolts 
The layout of how the blade should be on the board. The tape is to know where the blade will be when it isn’t on the board.
I made some holes for the bolts to go through, and then made insets on both sides of the plaque – front side so the magnets would be flush with the surface; back side for the nuts holding the bolts. So with the bolts through the wood, and the magnets on the bolts, the magnets held the blade to the plaque. I could still slide the blade pieces off of the magnet, but they held. I ended up adding some glue to the unusual contraption. It holds as long as it’s handled carefully. I suppose eventually I’d have to find a welder who can add something to the blades so I can mount it more securely.
The last thing to do was to get a smaller engraved plaque to have some thoughtful words on it or something. This was the most expensive part. I did it by going to an engraving shop (“Trophies! Awards! Retirement Watches! We do them all!”) and paying them money. Instead of something inspiring, I ended quoting the mechanic.
And there it is, a major award that I was awarded by me by breaking the very thing it is an award of.






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