It cost £12 with free shipping and the design intrigued me. It comes from an era when manufacturers wanted different because different was patentable and patentable meant protection and protection might well lead to profit if the design was liked. Even without cleaning and oil it works well enough despite the broken piece that I’ll…
From my journal Wednesday 22nd February 2017 A question came up about the mortise gauge pins not closing up enough in some makes of mortise gauge. If, for instance, you are cutting a 3/16” mortise or tenon and your pins prevent setting less than say 1/4”. What to do? The questioner did indeed close with an…
Thursday 16th February 2017 I’ve worked on and off with marking gauges all my working life. New ones have come and gone with the generations and then, because an originator passed, a stepson or nephew took over, and the heart and the art was lost, we ended up with slop around the stem. I have yet…
Mortise gaugesMortise gauges follow the same pattern as the marking gauge but have one moveable pin we adjust to the first fixed pin for distance or width. The term mortise relates to the common use for the gauge which is to set out the width of a mortise for creating mortise holes ready for chopping…
On marking gauges as a whole – Part I First of all let me take the unusual step and say I have lumped three different gauge types under the one heading as I have done, ‘marking gauges’, for, regardless of specificity and nomenclature, what they do is what they are. Beyond that, the names help us…
I thought about the squares the other day and thought it was worth getting to the importance of choosing the right one or ones. Just which ones will be right for you? I have experience with just about every type and i think the next blog could be on marking gauges soon.
I think that it helps to see hand positions on tools and my best thoughts are to show from photographs how best to arrange and then practice using them. With the gauge issue, I have come across hundreds of people who struggle to use great force when the opposite is what is exact to task….
There are of course several types of European marking gauges that come in different shapes and sizes and I should like to see these as images here, to see how and why they differ, what woods they are made of and so on. If anyone has a picture of say a Polish or Belgian gauge…
The simplest marking gauge is obviously the single pin gauge and of course it doesn’t take much to adapt this to mark out mortises, just a little imagination. I have bought these gauges for 20 pence here in the UK on a regular basis. On the internet new and packaged marking gauges seem to sell…
The combination gauge Two gauges common to woodworking are the marking gauge and the mortise gauge and both are essential primarily to joinery. Mortise gauges tend to be more expensive because of the addition of the adjustable extra pin point and so we find a unique gauge we call the combination gauge. It makes good…