It’s a Major Award!

The nearly finished award

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.

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.

The final plaque with the mounted broken mower blade - left half is on at a slight angle, the right half is straight
The completed project

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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