The Jasper Kade HDD-Blade-Jig™

Hi Guys,

Just thought I'd post about a simple blade-jig I made recently. It's just a little idea I had one day while trying to make my own to start restoring some blades I have. And so in the spirit of recycling / reusing, I present a quick quide to making your own blade jig.... I thought it's pretty unique and I know you guys will appreciate it.

I had 3 old IDE harddrives in a cupboard - the drives were pretty old and generally not working, so I hacked them open. (you need a few Torx screwdrivers to open these...) And then under the arm that extends to read/write to the platters, you'll find some healthy sized rare-earth magnets... so I took these out from all the drives and had about 5 flat magnets - now I just needed a suitable way to either embed the magnets in a block of wood, or fixed underneath a section of aluminium - basically some way to create a magnetized bed for the blade to sit on.. I then took a look at the actual aluminium housing of the hard drives and thought 'well why not use the rest of it..' So long story short, I cut the drive housing in half and then packed the magnets into the front half of the aluminium shell, bulked it up with some metal putty and then closed off the open back end with a small piece of plywood.
I then cut a piece of compressed engineers felt to glue across the jig which acts as a firm backing for the blades' spine to press against while sanding (and also to protect it from scratching..)
Finally the two existing screw holes in the hard drive shell worked perfectly for screwing the whole unit tightly down into a block of pine for support.
What i also do is just cut a strip of broad masking tape that I stick to the surface to both give the blade edge a very fine cushion, and also as a means to protect the surface from getting sanded to death - since you simply peel the used tape off once you're done with a session..

And so the end result is a pretty slick looking, highly effective blade jig, that only cost a bit of time to make. (I should have taken process photos, but didn't actually think of it at the time, still its a pretty basic project so I hope the end result pic is enough to understand what I did..)

Have fun :tu

nice one jasper - I've got a few bum drives myself :)

Damn this whould of helped last weekend =)

Thanks for the tip. I have 6+ dead or old drives laying around. I might have to fashion one of these.

This is an excellent jig! Best one i've seen yet. Mines really ugly :)

I think that I will make one of these. It looks great. I especially like the casing, it makes the whole thing look really nice.

BTW: Where can I pick up some of that compressed felt?

One thing though, I have used the magnets from Hard Drives for this very purpose, but you are going to need several (at least 5, as were used) in order to make this work properly, as they are not very strong, particularly in the newer hard drives. Older drives may have stronger magnets, IDK. Also, each hard drive will generally have 2 magnets. There are some good tutorials online on how to get the magnets out of hard drives.
Anyways, I purchased some extremely powerful 1" Diameter earth magnets off eBay and they have worked much better, IMO. YYMV

Thanks guys for the compliments - I see myuserid has fashioned one himself - it looks hot btw.

Also just to answer the question about the felt - I got a section of the compressed felt from a hobby shop here in SA, so not sure how available it is where you guys are..