Marking gauge

As previously discussed at Wood’n’bits, woodworkers have a need for several marking gauges. Since I owned only one, and figured that my poor woodworking skills might somehow be related to this lack of measuring devices, I decided to build this particularly nice, one-hand-adjustable example.

The article from Popular Woodworking can be downloaded for free, and I highly recommend it. After something like two hours in my shop (at something like 35°C, feel free to convert this here), I ended up with an almost-functional gauge:

For now, the pin is still missing, since I didn’t have a broken drill bit, and I didn’t want to break one for this purpose. The wedge is still not the final version, that particular detail making it a captive wedge is missing (I blew it away with the chisel, and I didn’t have the time to make a new one, this lake and the beloved one were calling for a bathing expedition).

And since the pin is stil missing, I couldn’t really test drive the gauge, but of course, I did some dry runs. The gauge really fits greatly and naturally in the hand, and the one-hand adjusting really works fine. So, in conclusion, this was a fine and quick afternoon project, I can highly recommend it.

Oh, and I changed the header picture of the blog, the moonlit, snow-covered one was not really suitable for this time of the year…

~ by Michael on July 5, 2010.