How to make Marking Gauges | Paul Sellers

[Music] i want to show you something i came up with this about oh must be two decades ago about you know when you've not got much money and you need some marking gauges you need some fancy ones you don't need fancy ones so what i want to do is show you how to make a wonderful gauge i've used for a long time it's got a sliding beam in here you press it here it locks the stock against the beam and you have your gauge but what we're going to do is make a system of gauges so what we do is we're going to work on making one of these this is the stock and then we're going to make a system of using the beam we're going to make seven different beams that will all fit into the same stock so if you don't have a lot of time and a lot of money you can make one of these and then you can make the additional pieces the single pin for the marking gauge the twin pins for mortise gauges and then right on top of all of that you've got this fella which is the one i've made and the one i'm going to show you actually all the way through this is the one we're going to film now but then i'm going to show you how to set up and make the others suit their purpose so we will end up with a quarter inch 5 16 so 3 8 a half inch and a 3 4 inch mortise gauge set to your chisels not set to my chisels not set to arbitrary sizes you could do six millimeter chisels you can do eight millimeter chisels if you're in the metric system if you're in my system you'll be using um 5 16's quarter inch whatever i'm going to come up with those in a minute but watch this and see if you don't enjoy it so i'm going to start out by showing you the layout of the stock itself because that's the most complicated part for now [Music] okay we're ready to start laying out and the first thing we're going to do is take the the block that's going to make the stock the sliding part like this that goes onto the gauge we're going to make that first and uh to do that what i want to do is show you how i arrived at the position for the hole the hole actually goes through the center and what we need to do is take a straight edge like a ruler and make a line from corner to corner or from each corner to each corner across the middle that will give us the pinpoint dead center of the gauge and what i'm going to do is mark it out in pencil but afterwards i'm going to go over it i'm doing both sides of this but afterwards i'm going to go across where the crosshairs meet with a knife to get that pinpoint accuracy that i want for the dead center of this so i'm accurate from the center point on this side is exactly the same as it is on this side you could use a square and transfer it to the other side but this will work perfectly oh i have sized my piece and i've made sure i always use a vernier to get thicknesses right to make sure that i'm exactly what i need to be checking both sides and that one this one says 23 22.36 and this one says 26.33 so that is very accurate for handwork so we've got these sized and we're ready that's the first point i want to show you is how do you get that center point so from here now we're going to be boring a hole through here and what instead of just boring the hole through with a bracing bit we're going to do a pilot hole through there first of all we're going to put it in the vise we're going to take a a drill bit with a 1 8 bit in it or smaller something that will take the snail of the um brace that we've got the bit of it that we're going to use that will have the tooth of the the thread on it that will pull itself through so we'll be putting this we're going to drill down about halfway through and then we're going to drill from the opposite side and that will meet in the middle and if there is a slight out of squareness the twist in the drill will pull itself to square and we'll get that perfect hole that goes right down the center perpendicular to this outside face and that's what we're searching for because that's what's going to guide the brace and bit when we start to bore the hole what i'm doing here i'm taking the knife because the knife will give me the superb accuracy that i need i'm just going across the middle with a knife line about a quarter of an inch long or something like that so it doesn't show after i've cut the hole this is the cross hair of those two is exactly where i want to be to get the precision of the center so i've made sure i've done everything i can to be accurate because this gauge needs to be accurate no pressure i like this kind of work though don't you just take your time be patient with yourself give you time and i'm taking a square hole and i'm even going to take a file to it and sharpen it because i want that accuracy again so i rotate it on the flat faces like that and that gives me i hope it gives me okay just insert the dot the very pin point don't press it too much just lightly and when you see the dot is exactly on those two crosshairs just press it down and then start to do a little rotation and that will create a conical inside there a cone should i say right on there lift it off make sure it's as centered as you can probably get and then just nudge it over if you need to like i just did so i came at an angle brought it on the center look down on it and my eye told me that's perfect so that's that and now i'm going to drill halfway through as i said i'm just going to go in with the drill bit 1 8 bit for me stop so i'm looking into that and i have got this dead on it's perfect i i don't think i could do better and then this one before i go all the way in i'm just eyeballing and it looks good to me and listen now it should connect with the other half there it was so i let the bill the twist now i go all the way through and that will have light that will have a line so if it was slightly out of square it would have aligned it up because the rim is exactly where it needs to be [Applause] so i'm happy with that put it in the vise and i'm going to bore all the way through now with a three-quarter inch bit abrasion bit and that's because the stem is going to be made from a three-quarter inch by three-quarter inch piece it may be slightly slightly ever so slightly bigger so i start the boring bit now again i'm only going to go halfway through but there's something that i've got to do beforehand which i am stopping now because i want to emphasize something i'm actually not ready to bore this bit yet i've got to rate lay out for something else i have to lay out for this piece to go in into the um i've got to get this perfect so because if this is slightly off this sliding won't work it won't lock that mechanism will not work so i'm instead of boring this through now i'm going to hold off and i'm going to show you how we lay out to get the precision that we want for this sliding um lock bar to go in so that's what we'll do now okay now that we've got the position of the three-quarter inch hole just described onto the surface there i'm going to take my square and line it up with the top of that arc of that circle and i'm going to take a knife here and i'm just going to make a nick on the corner you can walk all the way across if you want to go lightly if that's good like that i'm going very lightly just enough for me to see it although i doubt whether i will see it then from where that intersects the corner right there we're going to come down 3 16 of an inch which is right there i'm going to transfer that now over to the other side that's just going to be the rim i'm actually going to be boring a hole through here so where this this line that was aligning with the top of here that's actually going to be the center of a hole that i'm going to be boring through here so let me well it's actually going to be let me check it's going to we're going to be drilling a 7 16 hole so it's going to be slightly off center but it's going to be close to center so i'll give you the exact size when i start doing it okay from so this line here is the top of the arc this one is 3 16 lower down and from this one we're going to go up 7 30 seconds which is exactly the distance i want so there is my 7 30 seconds and we can instead of we can just take that mark lock the square on to that mark there that will be the center point for our 7 16 hole that we're going to be pouring through so i've got this side marked as well now stand it up on edge and go into your knife nick and just go ahead and mark it across the face with a light pass i'm just doing more of a press in the mid section rather than on either side stand it up and do the same on this side into your knife nick and across that mid section there and that there is the center of the 7 16 hole we're now going to bore through this way so we want the dead center of that and we're going to use a marking gauge to get that dead center and this has to be accurate we've got to drill through from broth to both sides and into a meet in the middle again so just eyeball for center first of all just press it somewhere near that line and then turn it around and see how good you were and i am oh man i am so close so there it is i believe that's it i'm right on that mark and now i'm going on this side so i am dead centered on that so when i turn it around i know i'm centered go to this side press it into that line because you want it square going through this way but you also want it square going through this way as well so quite a challenge now because we now have to bore a hole into here uh and i'm going to put this in the vise i'm going to just make that a little bit deeper with the oil like that and then into this one and i'm going to stand it up in the vise because i find i work better this way i know some of you will have a drill press and this is actually ideal if you've got a drill press i would say go ahead and use it if you like to it's just your choice okay i'm gonna dip in and out of this because we we've got this hole to bore but we can't bore the next one until we've made this we've got to make the sliding pin because we're actually going to bore through this face through this pin to get the exact arc and the position of the arc we need so don't race ahead and start drilling holes too far in advance so here now oh this is where it gets a little bit scary i do want it to be centered going across this way so i have to rely on my intuition now and i want it to be square all the way through this is where it can go off quite quickly so i don't want to go past a little bit past halfway but no more i'm probably nowhere near that yet but let's have a look just put the pencil in and see not too far a little bit more it's like everything it just takes a little bit of patience so it's pulling itself in such a boring job this okay so careful very very careful hard to correct this if you go way off and it might be quicker there i am luke i think that was probably about as perfect as i could get it really and i didn't do any cheating but because it's sliding in so easily without bending the bit i believe i feel pretty good about what i did there this is where the real test is if i slide this in and of course with a rat rat-tailed um file i feel good about that that's going to go it just needs a little bit of a minor adjustment really but i i feel very good about that i can go in with a little rat tail file or a round file and true that up a little bit more but i've got this hole to bore through here yet so if i if i've got to do that that will correct some of that and it could be just pure friction because once you go into the hole there's a buildup of tightness that i've left in there so it's going to be great okay now what we've got to do is we've got to make one of these that's my next task is to show you how to make one of these and these are really great fun to make so it doesn't take very long just a little bit of skill now i've got a piece of three quarters of an inch square i've kept it long because uh it's going to be handy when you're cutting this stem this sliding lock bar uh if you keep it long while you do the cutting and shaping of it because that way you can clamp it in the vise so i've got this is about 10 inches long but you could make it just six inches and it would be fine actually it's nearly 12 inches long but i'm planning on making a spare one it's always good to make a second one because they do wear out over a number of years and if you had one already made up then you can lose it wherever you want to which probably is what will happen with mine but there you go so what we're going to do first of all we're going to measure up from the end three inches of this and then we're going to make a knife wall all the way around on that three inch mark to take us all the way onto each facet and that's going to be a shoulder line that we're actually going to cut two but we're only going to go very shallow it's only going to be maybe an eighth of an inch deep or something somewhere like that don't quote me until we get to this because i'll be giving you exact sizes either here or in a drawing so that's my overall shoulder line and then from there i'm going to measure three quarters of an inch which is going to give me the overall length of this when i actually cut it off so i'm going to leave it in the length for now it gives me a good holding device when i'm doing my shaping this cut line you see i'm just rotating this and going off the faces nearest to my stock of my square i'm not following the normal protocols and it's come dead out and dead on so there it is that's what i've got to do now we're going to bring you closer so you can see how i'm going to lay out this circular part to make the the pinfall the dowel that's going to go into the hole my next job is i've got to put a circle on here i don't know you won't if this is a little bit like a mushroom so the stem is narrower than the top part the overhanging part of the mushroom so i've got to do the same on this one what we do is we start out with the square section so we've got to set a marking gauge so that we've got a we're going to have a 7 16 diameter rod this thing this sliding lock bar that's going to pass into it so the first thing we've got to do is find the center of this piece of wood and we do that just the same way we did on the stock by drawing a pencil line from corner to corner and that will give us a dead center of this piece of three-quarter inch square stock then we take the all and go right on that mid section no we don't we don't need to do that i'm getting ahead of myself because it depends on what we're going to do i can use something that's got holes in it that are 7 16 and just place that over those two cross hairs or i can take the all and put a mark right on that and then i can take the this um these calipers and set those to 7 30 seconds and that will give me a 7 16 diameter uh dowel or rod that will pass into it so we have a choice there if you don't have one of these you might have one of these and if you don't have one of these you could have some other compasses that will help you to get that whole exa that diameter exactly right so that's what i'm working on next so depending on on which method you have access to make a mark in the on the crosshairs and set this to 7 30 seconds oops there we go that's 7 30 seconds right there drop it into the hole and describe the circle like that and and this is not rocket science at all but it's just a question of getting what we want is the outside walls that's the reason we're doing this i'm going to go over with this because i do have a 7 6 7 16 hole on this and i'm going to eyeball that i already have a wall now that i just marked with the gauge so if i put this on here and mark it with the pencil i'll i'll have something really black and white to look at and to show you okay i've got my bullseye it's not quite on the center but it's centered this way and this is what i'm going to do i'm going to just take my finger like that and ink that in a little bit darker while i've got this setting i'm going to go to this one flip over and go to this one so now i can see pretty clearly where my lines are going to go now what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my marking gauge and i'm going to take it and set it to the furthest point just like that that means i can use this to run gauge lines from that three inch mark i can run that all the way down to the end so i take this and run a gauge line i turn over and run a gauge line turn over and run a gauge line and flip over instead of turning over and run another gauge line then i turn it around and i run the gauge lines on the opposite faces like that and like that and like that and those are cut lines and i can cut down those with a hand saw with a tenon saw down to this stop line here and that's what i'm going to do next so if i put this in the vise here you'll be able to see what i'm doing i don't have enough length on my tenon saw to go all the way uh flip over and come from the other side okay and then we can do the opposite wall here so i'm not really too far off my shoulder maybe down this one this one might get a little bit more awkwardness because it's so thin and the springiness in the oak nope i'm good i think down to your shoulder line and then down this one i don't have much to hold on to there now [Music] i went a little off track there uh mmm i think i'm doing fine i think it's going over like this good and then i cross cut these up to my line so i need a chisel of some kind oh yeah snug it right up against that shoulder line now of course these aren't going to pop off these outside bits will but that mid section if you remember didn't go all the way down so i just straight grained out no problem just split cut and then go in with your chisel and then do each face the same i don't need to go in with the knife with the deepening the knife wall now because i've got that shoulder to work too far keep flipping it until we've gone all the way around [Music] this is the fun bit when you see that it just pops off you've got that little half diamond in there you just take your chisel and pack it into it so i've got my shoulder all the way around and you start to see what we've got when you put the two together you start seeing how this is going to be formed from this so i need this length remember don't cut it to length yet because now we've got to round this and that's what we do next we've got some options for rounding this but i'm going to go with my spokeshave flat bottom spoke shave nothing special and what i'm going to do is bring it up high enough to where the spokeshave isn't hitting the bench and i still have room for my hands so my hands on either side and just start doing some pull-ups this is your daily gym exercise so we do some pull-ups and then we do do some down presses into the shoulder and it will only leave a little bit down there so keep it parallel if you can and then just start rounding following that radius that you've marked on the end so i can see exactly where i'm going i'm keeping my pencil line the whole time and while i'm in this body position i turn it this way because it works very nicely so pull those even strokes until you just see it approaching your graphite line from your pencil there it is turn it round and go down the hill and do your bench pressure smoke not bench presses there it is so now we've got this beautiful half round uh already done we've got half of it we just have to do the other half as near as we can get it same as now i would suggest that instead of going with the piece of wood with the hole in it you can use that just initially see there but what i would do is i would bore a hole in another piece of wood and that way you won't be wearing this hole out and you'll keep the accuracy of it but i can see the bruising on the corners here and that's what's subsequently going to guide me and then i bring in this little tool it's just a card scraper and i pull up like this and i bend it i bend it so i can maximize the width of the cut which takes away the flatness so you don't end up with flatness work down like this pull up off the end all the way through and then you'll find that your your piece of wood is starting to mark it like that so now we've got some bruising on there that we can work to to guide all the cuts as we go down this stem all the way down to the shoulder a little bit more technique to show you yet but very nice isn't it so now that i've cut a hole in a piece of wood so i can offer the dowel part into the hole and i'm already in three quarters of an inch nearly and i can keep turning that and bruise that wood and it goes a little bit deeper every time then i come out go into the vise and i i can either use the spoke shape like this which i like the idea of better then i can come back with the card scraper i'll work that piece of wood that way so i'm going to this is the opposite side now so i do the same again see how far we've got so and the other thing is not to forget we can use sandpaper too ultimately this scraper takes over from the spokeshave to further refine it and improve it that's great look at this now we are cooking with gas okay when we get nearer to this shoulder we're going to switch to either a rasp or another tool and i think i'm going to do that now so you can see exactly what i mean before i do reach for the rasp however i'm going to take my chisel and i'm going to just check the grain direction because now what i can do is i register the flat face of my chisel to this long long axis here and i push into the corner and then i'm following the radius all the way around and this is going to get rid of the bulk of that waste now i'm i'm feeling after which direction that grain is going because if it dives i have to go to a rasp pretty much it's hard to go with any other tool and if i'm being careful come across the grain with the chisel like that pair down that shoulder because we didn't cut through this with the uh saw did we and that's the contrast there is the shoulder you can uh well i can see anyway not necessarily you but i can feel this part is rounded following that and this is what i had before so i've taken these corners out and i'm going to do the same on this one exactly the same way so i feel after what that grain is giving me because um if it nose dives i don't want it to nosedive because it'll weaken this juncture in the bar see there it's pulling me a little bit so i come back up take a little bit less a little bit less here we go now if you've got a 3 8 washer you could drive this into that not three a 7 16 washer nearly got myself in trouble there um you could drive this into that washer now and it would take this down to a perfect 7 16 diameter i just don't have that luxury so it's not hard to continue doing this see it hits that thick point there but i'm really not far off so a little bit more pairing or i could bring in something like this i could bring in this and i could just literally just do a little very light on the finest side because this has a coarse tooth and a fine tooth rotate it and take it down with this which is a little bit sledgehammer to crack a nut really but it does take it down muy rapido i think it works quite well i think i probably would favor just going with the scraper most of all because that way but it worked fine that did i still have to go with the scraper though in with the block with the hole in not very far off i think i'm about three eighths from three quarters from the stem a little bit of cleanup on the inside corner and i think i'll be there this is taking off the equivalent of a plane stroke so there we are we are cooking with gas there it is we're down to the shoulder line a little bit of cleanup on this inside corner with a chisel and i'm ready to take you through the next step [Music] so [Music] i'm almost there now there's one last step and that is to take a piece of abrasive paper i've got some abrasive cloth back paper but some paper works just fine and you can pull this now and it will even [Music] further enhance the rounded part and generally i wouldn't advocate this for other things because of course it's a cross-grain sand which shows in the final but on this it's just fine oops so once you've got it very very close we want it to fit onto there pretty much like that so we want to do a little bit of refining but not too much now i look for the bruising i take my scraper apply it to the bruised area it's not bruising it's more the shiny area really nicey did you enjoy that i am hoping you loved it because i did so that now brings us up to the next stage where we slide this inside the hole like this make sure it fits make sure it goes all the way up to the shoulder just like that which it is and then we can drill through this and through this at the same time and that's what's going to give us the perfect marriage and that's the next step now that we've got this pegged as it were um what we want to do is uh enter it in the hole we're going to drill a hole we're going to take that um three-quarter inch bit now and put it back in the brace and we're going to bore through the the middle of the stock and also through the uh the um the sliding lock bar and but what we want to do we want to make sure that this is protruding through the hole about 3 16 of an inch that works fine so i'm just coming out 3 16 on the outside so that when i bore through here that will be the start of the arc and then as i slide this in it's going to tighten up because it has a a sloping just a slope going into that curve and that's what tightens it on the lock bar but we want to make sure that this aligns with the face of this so it's just a question of eyeballing it twisting it to where it needs to be and that way when we put the mushroom in it will be aligned with the faces of the stock of the gauge so we plant this in the vise and we do the boring bit yet again [Music] [Applause] [Music] this last little detail we're going to create the sliding part so i'm starting three quarters of an inch from this rim point here to where i start my cut just like that and if you have a a small rasp as i do you can go onto that slope like this and just refine it but if you don't have one don't worry because guess what works just as well a little flat piece of uncomplicated steel just pull that into so you get a smooth transition from the arc into that long incline that is that is that finish so when you look inside i don't know if you can see but when you slide this inside the incline hits the top of the stem just like that and locks it in place the next step that i've got to do is i've got to shape at the moment i just have a round hole and then what we want is square sides at the bottom of the hole and a slight radius on there it's not that slight i think it's um one and three quarters but what the reason we have that is it cradles the uh the bar this is the shape of the bar when it goes into here it seems to lock it down and seat it better than a square edge i don't know if that's true but it seems to do exactly what i want it to do so i'm continuing with that tradition there was a reason they put it in there on the original marking gauges almost all marking gauges have this radius on the bottom and i believe it's so it cradles it so that when you put the pressure on the top bar it seats in there and keeps it in a permanent position when it's locked down so that's what we're doing next so the first thing i've got to do is um is do the layout for it it's not complicated it's i'm going to use one of these if you don't have one of these you do need something that will give you a one and three quarter inch radius that you can place on there and you could use as i this is much bigger than that than that radius but you could use something like that a small tin the lid off a sauce bottle or something like that that will give you that radius so or you could simply go to one of these set the distance between the two to seven eighths of an inch but the problem with it is you you end up putting a dot in your material but that would work too if you wanted to use a compass that would be fine what i want to do is i want to show you some of the things that i found beneficial to laying out this so we want to make sure that we don't radius the wrong part this is the top of the gauge here so this fits with that conformation from the radius that we made on the inside of the uh sliding locking bar so we want a radius on the bottom i've just put a faint line in there um but um and that line actually on my um the end of my uh ruler is that one and three quarter inch radius so i could just use that that would be fine but just in case you you don't have that i've got also got this which has a one and three quarter inch radius somewhere on here there it is this is my one and three quarter inch radius is here so um i can use that just fine so what i'm first of all going to do is i'm going to use the square just to run some square lines down the side of the exact width of the the hole like that on both sides and that's going to give me a visual so that i'm working in the right direction and then on the bottom of the radius i'm going to make a square line you have to position your square so you maximize the length of the stock here against the longest part there okay now i've got those lines on this is already finished i don't have anything else to do here those lines have to go on the other side so i may as well do that now while i'm in that layout mode there up the side again it would be terrible if you uh did the shaping on one side and then shaped it on the top on the other because the distance from the end of the hole is the same top and bottom at the moment well it will be always okay so that's what we've got this is not what we want we want to do some shaping in there so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to make a center line on on this piece so that means one and one-eighth because this is two and a quarter material and one and one-eighth here and that center line goes from top to bottom lost my center line though there it is there's my center line you could use a knife if you want to but remember knife marks are permanent once i've got that i have a center line on my strip on my um my template here so i'm going to bring that to that one and three quarter mark and line that center line up onto my piece of wood on the center line underneath and that way i can mark the radius exactly but what i'm going to do while i've got this i found it very helpful to go in with a knife at this point and make a knife wall too that i could work to try not to cut my template and ruin it but that's where the end of the ruler worked very well as well so i've got that knife wall and that will serve to drop my i have a 3 16 chisel which is very nice for this but a quarter inch chisel will do it but not quite as nicely but i can't give you a quarter inch chisel not from here anyway i mean a 3 16 chisel hopefully you've got one or you've got something you know i often in the past i've made um uh cuttings uh cutting chisels from just a piece of steel without a handle and use that so you might consider that if you're up for that okay make sure we're doing the radius in the right place one or three quarters well when i was an apprentice it was always one of three daughters okay there we oops yeah that's right yeah yeah hang on did i get that one right i did thankfully it's easy to go off piste and end up marking something the wrong way or the wrong side with all these arches on here never seen so many arches okay there we go one and two like that so i've got my knife wall there i will probably go in now and put a knife wall on the edge of the rim of the hole as well while i'm here just to meet that internal corner and that that will stop the the surface fibers from splitting above when we start chopping these little corners out so that's just a a good idea i thought it was brilliant but there you go okay you'll enjoy this little bit this does not take very much at all um so what does take a little bit of time is fitting the stem to the hole and remember you've got seven to do but i'll show you what i did and it worked great so that's it i'm really ready now just to chop this as i said i've got a narrower chisel that will help me to drop on there of course it's the chisel is going to create flats but they are so close together you barely see them and i wouldn't worry about that because you can always go in with a very fine rasp if you've got one and you can use that to uh clean up the seating area of the bar hole the stem hole there you go so that's it don't underestimate the um the necessity for accuracy when you start on these and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut this a little bit away from that knife wall first of all about um oh as much as a sixteenth but maybe a thirty second would work i've got it nice and secure in the vise now that lifted the the material up to the knife wall so i'm angling my chisel just away working either side and i'm i'm using the knife walls to drop much the knife along the long grain one i'm going with the grain i dropped my chisel right into the knife wall there because i've already weakened this fiber on the end and now i'm in my knife wall with the chisel corner right in the corner where the two lines meet and i'm chopping and i'm going to go about halfway through now i'm checking my alignment i'm listening feeling the whole time prepared to change the angle of approach this goes so easily and the course mesquite is very a very brittle wood so it there i'm in that knife wall again so i've got two little flats really and actually that's going to be fine because i'm going to refine it in a minute down remember looking good and now the other side i'm going to do this side i think i'm in my knife wall sometimes so i want to be away from the knife wall first of all sidewall i feel like i'm doing an operation here and i'm describing my actions which i suppose i am in a way just not a human underneath this chisel edge thankfully okay so now i go directly into that knife wall and i get the precision i want [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] this next bit is where we take that same chisel we start to refine the meeting level of the two halves just very carefully now i've choked up on my chisel with my fingers like this so i don't overshoot and shoot into that opposite side and break those unsupported fibers on the outside edge because it would look ugly and i would feel bad so just teasing out the choosing that chisel edge into those surface fibers a little bit and work from both sides in is what i'm saying so that so that you meet somewhere in the middle if you were slightly hollow inside it would be fine although i do always steer away from encouraging that now if you have a a small a narrow rasp that fits inside there or a file even you could use it that's that would be fine i wouldn't have any problems with that like much like i have one you see so as long as you go very gently especially rasps tend to pull the outside fibers but i'm telling you if you took a piece of wood like this and just shaped one edge of it um it would work just as well if not better so i'm going to take a rough plane here make a radius and it can be a smaller radius than the one of the actual hole like that now this piece is quite a long piece but if i took this now cut that off and wrap the sandpaper around that radius put it back in the vise like this try not to rock try to go very steadily inside the hole and keep it as straight as you can and just follow the radius just like that and that will refine the bottom of the hole beautifully i think that works fine when you're refining the inside of the hole what i've done is i've got that radius that i just showed you how to make but you can also take some double-sided tape as i would and and put it on the wood and then add the sandpaper the abrasive paper to that wood it will give you that arch but also on the underside i've got a flat corner and that's very useful to get inside the corners uh on the side areas just to refine that so that you have this nice crisp clean inside try not to go into the arches because you want those you want to go from the flat into the arch and down the other side as cleanly and as neatly as you can but that's what i would do i would make some little paddles that will help you they take just seconds well maybe a minute or two to make add the double-sided tape the mounting tape not the soft one just the film put that on the surface take your abrasive paper press it onto it trim the sides and you can refine the hole inside there without going to the expense of buying more files special files or rasps if you wanted to do that for the top there on the radius you could just take a three-quarter inch dowel and then reduce the size the thickness of the abrasive paper and use that on that but you probably won't need that because it should come come cleanly off the auger bit when you bore the hole so now i've got my hole refined as much as i need to now i'm going to show you how we make the stem that goes inside this hole because that then moves us on to preparing for the points whatever we're going to do i'm going to be making the complicated one so i'm going to take one of these square shafts that i've got here and i'm going to actually cut the mortise hole to take the uh the stem of the cutting gauge uh or the other to take the the cutter and the wedge before i do any shaping because it's much harder if you have a round on the top and around on the bottom to get the holes exactly where the mortise hole where it exactly needs to be and that crispness is critical to that wedge being exact so we're going to do that next [Music] now we're going to fit the um the square stem to the hole and it's got to be sized fairly precisely so what we have to do i've left my wood although i think on the um the details it said it was a three-quarter inch by three quarter inch stem but i left it a 64 no not a 64 maybe a 30 second oversize so that i could actually fit it directly to the hole just in case you know you start working on these holes and they get bigger and bigger and wider and wider and before you know it you need the extra material mine is fine it's just still that difference oversized so what i've got to do what i did first of all is i planed up one face planed up the next face checked it for square even though we're going to be putting a radius on there it's good to have these reference faces um a square and and reference faces that you can really work to and um and then what i did is i just sized it to the hole that's what i or that's what i would do is size it to the hole now it sounds like i did it but i did do a couple so i've got already got a couple prepared and i'm gonna drop this in the vise now and take a couple of swipes with the plate take it out and just try one end up against the hole and then the other end i need to take more so i just keep going down like that because one extra stroke can be one extra stroke too much and it can make everything a little too thin undersized and that's the last thing we want now if you're fortunate enough to work on this majestic wood coal mesquite that just dropped in then if you can if you do have a piece of mesquite you can make this system from you are truly blessed but one of the benefits of it is most people associate mesquite with barbecue wood which is a very fine thing if you're a bbq fanatic that's fine and i'm going to reset my plane now and just take off the heavy set that i had just to refine this surface a little bit more because it's just exactly the right width now but i just need a little bit so now it's actually going inside the hole it should go in on both sides if i've done my work right so if you've got mesquite you should start getting the essence of mesquite the smell of mesquite there is no equal to on the face of the earth it's the most wonderful smell whether you use it for barbecue or not it's an amazing smell okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to round the top to fit into the top section which is a direct three-quarter inch diameter radius no diameter the radius is going to be three-eighths isn't it so we can use again i can use this if i want to find the three-quarter inch drop it on here line it up with the very top console and draw that radius in there i don't need a knife wall just draw it in there and i've got it and then i do the same on the other end and then i'm going to plane this just like we would a bull nose on the edge of a box top or something like that i'll walk you through it you're going to enjoy [Music] [Music] what we're going to do next is we're going to actually cut the wedge shape because that's the what we place against the the stem here to get the exact angle that we need when we cut the mortise because it's going to taper from being wide on the top on the dome on the top down to the underside and it tapers from top to bottom so i need um my wedge is going to be 5 16 at the top 3 16 at the bottom one and three quarter inches long and all i'm going to do is use a knife to lay it out cut that wedge shape first without refining it or shaping it in any way so that's what i will do now i'll show you how i get there to layout for the wedge we're going to very simply use a knife and a ruler to let me find my ruler where did i put that um i've lost it so i'll use the one on my square so i'm gonna i'm gonna measure from this planed edge here that i've got 3 16 first there and then 5 16 up at this top edge top edge of the wedge and then just take a straight edge and join the two and i'm thinking this uh knife is going to give me a crisper cleaner edge to work to so so that i've got the edge i want the mark i want and i'll i'll just cut that in the vise now some tough stuff this is [Music] there you go and while i've got this in this position i'm just gonna clamp it and take a shaving off it although this is so smooth from the saw curve i don't want to spend a lot of time on that check myself make sure it's parallel to the opposite face and it looks good and that's it that's my wedge made i'm gonna while i've got it in my hand i'm just gonna take my block plane and just take a shaving off the corner just to take off those hard corners and that's my wedge done so now i can start laying out for the mortise hole okay for this next step it's quite simple we're going to determine which is the top so this is why we marked the radius on the end so we wouldn't make a mistake so we would have this as a reference point so this is the top this is the edge that's going to have the cutter in it and we're going to measure from the end and i'm going to mark everything with a knife probably so i'm coming in from the end a half inch and just making a mark now while i've got that there i am going to make a distance i have to determine what the distance is from here for the width of the mortise hole so i'm going to square the line across the top so this is the top of the dome and we're actually going to be uh radiusing this so any mark we put on here is going to disappear so we don't need to go heavily so i've got that half inch mark and then i mark it onto this corner just for now so if i make the mark a nick there like that and then i take my wedge and i place it against that nick that well we'll have to i'll have to place it and then move because i want to bring in the cutter this is the cutter this is 1 8 thick now that's very thick for a cutting gauge i don't need it that thick it just happened to be a piece of steel that i had but you could go down quite a bit smaller than that and from that half inch nick that we put in there we want to make a mark on this side let me just press those together it's a little bit tricky and trying to hold the both together now the wedge is flush with the bottom of the stem i'll give you a quick glimpse at that in a second so there's my nick and i'm coming in this side here and making another nick that's going to mark the position of the mortise hole so i've got those two marks there and then this this mark of the second mark the one i just marked should i say here this one is the second mark this was the point where i started to do the mark and this one here is going to be squared onto the top and it's also going to be squared on the underside of the square so let me put my knife in that nick and move across the top just doing that mid section about the five six the three um three sixteenths chisel then i take that nick that one and i make the nick onto this corner because i want my uh blade to be dead square parallel should i say to the stock of the square when i run it okay so now i've got this point i've got this point i've got this distance marked and at this point i can bring in this and this together and that combined twosome gives me the position for the underside of the mortise hole so you can see it's really quite exact this now i wouldn't worry too much about it you probably will chop this exactly where it needs to be but if it went a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller you can make those micro adjustments after so there now i've got my i've got my lines on here i've got my lines on here and that means all i've got to do now is set up the gauge to run the parallel lines and that's what i'll do after this so what we're going to do now is we're going to um set the mortise gauge in the just the standard method which is to take the chisel you're going to use to chop the mortise and place it right between the two conical points so it's just inside the tips of the points and then we take that and we center that on the stem on the piece of wood so we press it into the wood here and then we turn it around to see indeed if those points are in the right position in this case they are and so then i can run my gauge line here flip it end for end just in case there's a discrepancy and do the same from here that gives me the wall that i need and now i'm going to chop through that midsection and i'll show you a little trick on the way to help because this is a very small mortise hole so we're going to do something that you probably have never seen me do before something i don't like to do but i'm gonna do it in this case let me see if i can pencil those in a little bit so you can see them and and we find out we make sure that we register the gauge against the same edge so if there is a minor discrepancy in the setting you will still be parallel that'll do now i'm ready for chopping the mortise staying away from that end wall because the fibers will compress once i've gone in i can move up to that end wall now knowing that those fibers are now solidly impressed into themselves this really doesn't take much doing so tease out the fibers try and keep the walls crisp now the one that's square the wall square is this one that i'm in now this is square from one side to the other this one is the narrow side this one is the top side so it tapers on that one side and that's important for us to realize because otherwise we'll be chopping square down so the one that's on the inside is going to be the square one i'm going to start from this side now and do just the same right in between those gauge lines work along just with hand pressure works fine i'm in that knife nick then so go back to this other side just to deepen a little bit more that just gives me that wall on either side for when i really start chopping with a little bit more gusto so this one i've gone at an angle because it's going to be angled [Music] i'm gonna just move this here because it's more centered in the vise because i can feel a little vibration there so i've taken off the bulk of the meat on that side so now i can chop with impunity because i'm not going to move that knife wall because i want this this is the wall that's going to be square from top to bottom now because this is such a small mortise hole i'm going to use a drill just to drill out a little bit down the center of this uh mortise because it'll it'll uh give a place for the material as i chop it will give a place for that material to go to so just about any size of there i don't it doesn't need to be sized to the opening i'm a little bit under that size so i'm going to go halfway through from this side like this and then come through all the way from the other side into this one because that will give me that extra space for the material to go to there it is i i don't like that message people are always asking me whether i use an auger or a drill to remove the bulk of the waste and i really really don't like it i never have it always feels so awkward and ugly so i'm going down here and i'm going to go down this wall and down this one now this is the wide point so i need to angle my chisel away from me and then pull those fibers into that waist area just like that i'm going to check myself for the width here's another piece of wood that's the same see i'm all i'm a little over halfway so that's great turn over now come from the other side up against the knife wall and i'll feel this go through in a minute this is angled away from me at the top because this is the underside so it's actually the other way not it matters much just twist that chisel a little bit just to nudge the fibers in the right direction a little hand pressure down the walls i'm going to use the drill again just to lift out the fibers otherwise it's tempting to lean against the end and we don't really want to do that [Music] so i'm just about to break through i think so this is the top face now i'm pulling the chisel just to get the the width equal across that will clean up the knife wall oh and there we are i'm going to just move the chisel backwards and forwards which isn't that easy it's nice and tight so it's self-supporting in that mortise hole which is a good sign clean up the corners let's see if we're close there is my cutter there is my wedge so i'm a little bit thick on my wedge yet so i've got to plane a little bit off the wedge or take it off the hole and i'd rather take it off the wedge so that's just i've got another wedge here i can put those two in the vise probably and just plain up the one point yeah that'll work i just have to work out how i'm to do it very small i need smaller fingers it's amazing the things you do just to get a crisp clean edge in it there it is let's see if this goes in there it's close a little bit more here's another method but you've got to watch your fingernails it's a good way of trimming your fingernails we definitely do not want it tight otherwise it will always be a strain to get it out close very close so that's how we fit the wedge fun isn't it great i'll finish that off and then we'll get back together [Music] here i'm using the plane to round the front of the stem by altering the angle slightly with every stroke [Music] next i'm using a straight card scraper but i'm flexing it slightly to blend the curve [Music] then i blend and smooth everything together with sandpaper the back of the stem also has a slight radius and here i am marking that directly from the hole for a perfect match [Music] the process of rounding smoothing and sanding is very similar to what i just did on the front now i can test the stem into the hole to test the fit [Music] i want a smooth operation for the gauge so i make small adjustments as needed to make sure it will run smoothly [Music] [Music] now i can finally test the locking [Music] mechanism [Music] now i can move on to shaping the stock here i am using a rasp thingy i picked up a while back but a regular rasp works just fine i use a flat file to refine the finish [Music] do [Music] onto the locking stem i cut this off but leave some of the square stock in place [Music] i'm going for a squared off mushroom look for the end of the locking stem [Music] i start this by marking some center lines and then making a sketch of the [Music] shape [Music] then i cut off the excess wood using the saw and then shape using the rasp and file [Music] again [Music] that's two sides done now i want the other two to match [Music] we are pretty much there this is starting to feel like a marking gauge now it's the little finessing details that make this such a lovely gauge to use [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what i'm going to do next is i'm going to find the exact center on this piece of wood and i'm going to find it using the gauge the marking gauge because that way i can make a mark on the end of this to align this jig too so the gauge line that went through the center of the pin i've now put on to the very end of this piece so i know it's dead center and i'm going to center this gauge so that i get the center pin exactly in the middle because i want this to be as accurate as is humanly possible by me uh because it just needs to look right it wouldn't matter really technically if it was off center but what does technically matter what matters is how i feel about it when i've made it and that's the most important thing so i'm ready to put my uh pin into this piece so i'm marking it here i don't know why because all i need is a mark on the end just to guide me and this is going to be removed after because i've got to shape the end of this yet and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to align this line which is centered on the pin with this line on the top of there this distance is half an inch from the end this is a marking gauge not the mortise gauge there'll be different marks for those so that's what i'm doing now i'm going to now clamp these together in the vise and go through the pair of them at the same time still using this pin that i filed the four corners on and drilling through the whole lot so this one because this is square we'll align it with the other piece of wood and it'll go through the two just fine so make sure you're fully aligned with that piece you've got the end piece on i'm going to go with i've made two pins i made the short one which is actually going to make the pin that goes into the final edition of this so i'm going to use this shorter version first to go into that second piece of wood the actual stem that i'm going to be making and then i'll go with the longer one because this pin is not long enough to go through both pieces of wood in and out give it time to breathe and that mesquite is very hard oh and it turned loose on me hang on a second be careful these do get very hot because of the friction as well [Music] i'm going to switch pieces of wood pieces of metal this is a longer one now and i'm going to go all the way through this time [Music] so [Music] my [Music] foreign [Music] very very very last bit of shaping we've got to do on this is to round the ends of the stem and it doesn't really matter what the radius is if you need to have a guide you could just take the end of a ruler a steel rule which will have a round end on there almost certainly and you could mark it with that but my suggestion is that you just go free hand with a rasp if you've got one if not some abrasive paper and just a couple of swipes up like that once you've got an a an angle of about 30 degrees start lifting the rasp onto the end turn it around and do the same from this side so 1 2 3 four five something like that six strokes if it's a good rush and then up on to the end and look for that continuous sweep last bit is just to take a the final sorry about the noise i can go lower in the vice and get rid of it but i don't really mind it so it is counterproductive that liberation and there it is it looks very nice to me i've got my round and then just take the file rub across the corners in a continuous sweep like that until you've gone all the way around it and then you've got a nice iris on the side it shouldn't need sanding that's the last bit i've got the other end to do and then all i've got to do is sharpen the pin which i'm going to do next to show you i'll finish this end off and then we'll get back together for the very final bit which will be shaping and inserting the pin so there we have it this is how we make these beautiful gauges so very nice very happy you made me a happy man if you watch this all the way through because it's quite a long session but a beautiful piece of work when you've done you'll enjoy it great [Music] [Music] huh [Music] this is how we sharpen the point and i've got a couple of pins now but what we do is we we've got the pyramid point and we can can we can use the very point that we ended up with there as the finish point but what we do is we just elongate that and work it around just like this held in the vise clamp like this it'll work just work it around you're just taking off any hard points just to start with like that and then of course we want to refine it if you go too shallow on this then you'll end up with a weaker point but i've got my point where i want it to be so i can release this from the clamp and then i'm going to chuck it into a drill driver just like this oops [Music] like that and then what we're going to do is we're simply going to attach some abrasive like this so this is just and i'm going to spin this onto the abrasive like that so i'll show you that next give me a minute i'm just going to chuck it into the vise and keep it in there and that's basically all i need so i can just take the drill now and move it along keep it moving just like that and that gives the tip the very nice shape and then go to a finer grit i've got 150 there you can go to it a 250 300 something like that 250 and 300 is plenty that's more than enough so that's the very last little bit that i've got to do a little bit more abrasive onto a block of wood take care when you're doing this think of safety think of your own personal safety this takes very little on this abrasive level so i'm just going to go to the two 250 now like that and there i've got a pristine point now watch it it does get hot but i've got a very nice point on my um tip now and that is ready to be inserted into my gauge very nice [Music] a little bit of cleanup now just to put stuff away i'm almost ready for that i'll be glad this series is done because it means i can clean up and put things in order not that they're disorderly just need straightening up a bit so i've got my pin to insert now um before i do that this is the only finish that i'm going to use on my gauges and on my stem is going to be some it's just simple really it's just going to be furniture polish you could use beeswax something like that but just furniture polish along the stem and on the stock the wedge the uh cross member you don't need any on the sliding tummy bar on the siding tension bar when you put that in the locking bar because especially where the wedge is because that could cause it to slip and i would use if you're going to put anything on there i would just use some rosin that you would get for a violin bow to create friction between that part which is what i do and so that's it basically just some furniture polish some very simple soft polish onto these surfaces and uh and we're good to go and then once that's done there's really nothing else to do this put the furniture polish on buff it with a shoeshine brush or a soft cloth and it will look beautiful this is looking stunning because i use mystique mesquite i've made these out of walnut maple cherry all manner of wood but padauk i've used all kinds of woods to make these from and they all look good and i have even made one out of pine at one time because i was desperate i didn't have a marking gauge and i made one it wasn't exactly the same as this i just did one with a wedge that slipped in the side that held the stem to where i wanted it but that was 30 years ago so there we have it that's that bit so we've got the wax on this slides in we put our locking bar in put our stem in and the only thing left now to insert is going to be the pin and that simply goes in like this but what we do is we chuck it in the drill like this and we spin it into the hole like that then we release it like that and there we have a very beautiful very very beautiful marking gauge that works like nothing else don't you just love that [Music] so we're ready to shake the top of the bar the stem uh make sure you get the right one because you've got your mortise hole cut in there and it tapers in one direction from wide to narrow but that was the idea of putting that mark on the end so we're gonna lock this into the clamp here just like that cinch it tight and in this case the uh the two the head and the shoe actually go in the vise in my case because my vise is too big to take just the bar in there then we take i'm using scrub plate to take off the bulk of this race i'm just staying slightly away from my line and then i'm going to angle over like just so i take off as much waste wood as i can that saves work on the next plane here and now i'm taking off those hard corners left by the scrub flame and working onto that top face just like that you can take a a scraper like this and bend it into the surface so i'm bending it quite considerably and that means i'll have zero flaps in here and zero hard corners but i'm not actually fitting it to the opening here i'm working just to my line to the arch on the end and i'll do the other side just the same way now i'm ready to take the uh the arc that we created in the bottom there and transfer it onto the end of my stem so i clamp it in the vise good sharp pencil line it up right with the very top so there's no gap and then you can plane to the arc that you mark on the inside do the same on the opposite end and then you can work to both ends and then the bit in between just gets straightened between those two points what we do as well is we pull a line from that uh end of the arcs just to guide us when we clamp this in the vise now we can um we can plane it to that stop point there now we've got the underside to shape so exactly the same procedure this one takes so little time this bit i hope you're enjoying watching this because i'm enjoying pulling this together for you it's been great back to my scrub again this does save a lot of work well worth making or should i say converting close to your line and then a little bit of refining and actually i did find um i used a little block plain now and again on this like this one here they're handy i don't really care for them very much but for this kind of work they're very pleasant to use but i wouldn't run out and buy one because number four will do anything you want really let me give that a bit of a shot and see how close i am pretty good very close so a little bit of scraping maybe a little bit more planing and a tiny bit of scraping i think we're going to get this together the scraper really is very beneficial in this especially these thin flexible ones when you start pulling off pushing this it just flattens out the curve or refines the curve really i just need a little corner off this hump here it's got a little high spots [Music] we detect we work as a detective really because we're looking for those points of contact really it's kind of forensic there we go so very very close now a little bit more on that end not much really almost you could sand it now without using the scraper i'm going off the end like that and hitting this plywood here so it's not hurting my scraper it's not hitting any metal i've got a feeling oh there we go again dropped it that is so close i'm looking at the shiny bits on the wood to tell me where to remove the stock so close oh there we go maybe the problem is right inside here i think it really wasn't a little bit there we've got it i think i'm close enough now i just need to sand this because i've not really sanded it much and that sanding will reduce the diameter sufficient so 150 grit all the way along and then you can go to finer if you want to i probably will not it's practical to have it a little bit less smooth give it a shot now see what we got definitely close enough now happy with that i'm now ready to start shaping the top and the bottom and um these have different radii so the top one is seven and a half and the bottom one is no sorry wrong way around the top one is four and three quarters the bottom one is seven and a half so i've got both of those on my template here so i can use the template to get the arcing and i'm just placing this right on my center line still in place flush at the top and pulling that line around and it's just a guide and it's not critical to the piece and then turn it the other way up so i've got the bottom in place i'm centering it on my center line flush at the bottom and then pulling my lines around there so i've got both marked on there i'm flipping over and i'm doing the same on the opposite side and the reason i'm doing that is because i can work to those lines from both sides if i need to i doubt whether i would actually need to but the lines are there just in case and that means i can now start shaping these arches it's going to be great [Music] simple [Music] uh [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so do i'm ready to cut the um slide locking bar to length and that's nothing to that we're going to do that and we're actually going to cut it to length and then we'll be ready to shape it as well so just in the vise [Music] cut through i've got enough to make another couple of tommy bars out of that i'm another sliding lock bars because these don't last forever and um you can't really turn it over and cut a notch in the other side because it gets too thin but now you know how to make one five minutes ten minutes to make one that's all it takes so you could either keep that little chunk of wood in your drawer somewhere or you could make another one now and have done with it then in five years time ten years time when you need to replace it you've got it ready in stock so that's it that's that part done now we've just got to shape this end part you could shape it to whatever you want hexagon hexagonal you could round you could put little thumb pieces in it you can do whatever you like on yours but i've decided i'm going to go with that four-sided mushroom shape that i think i have already showed you and if i didn't you'll see it in a minute when i make this one so that's where i'm going with this to to shape this through this four-sided mushroom thing i just took my pen i'm just going to take my pencil find the center eyeball for center eyeball for center and then down on each side on all four faces that will just give you a meeting point to cut to because we're going to shape this just like this we're gonna freehand it you could use a template if you want to just to get an arc on there now there's no point doing all four sides because you won't be able to see all four sides because you're going to cut off if you mark it now you'll be cutting it out cutting it off so i'm just shaping that to the shape i want i'll bring you in closer you can take a look at that what i did it's quicker to just cut the waste wood off with a saw the bulk of it until you can go in with a rasp or a file or whatever and i would probably just put this in the vise here so it's near the corner of the vise locked in to the vise and then take a rasp because i'm going to use the shinto but not on the coarse side i'm going to use the fine side and i just want a gentle curve over towards the center of the top but i want the top to be comfortable for when i press this so that's about as close as i would go with it for now and then bring in the file like this and just refine it flip over and do the same again i've got it resting on the vise this chunky head is resting on the vise so i hope you can see that gently gently this shinto rust can be quite aggressive or is it you being aggressive it does have an aggressive tooth cut so but it cuts very nicely cut smoothly really if you're careful bring it up a little bit and get that top all the things you've learned in this project should bless you i think then of course now we have lost our center line so we just go back in pick up the center line mark it on like that and now we can come and we can mark this side and this side just roughly back in the vise like that and then just cut this corner off so nice this is i love this kind of work don't you feel like you're in control i've known people that would use a router and set up a jig to carry the router on something like three hours of creating a jig for a few minutes work not for me coming you can see it coming together now can't you [Music] and this file this is a 10 inch backhoe file it's so beautiful it cuts so nicely wood steel brass just about anything you test it off and then just on these corners just take the file and run it up to the top it'll just soften that on your fingers i don't think i'd bother sanding that for sure a little erasing there that's all nice very nice so that now goes into the stock like that and i can slide hopefully the bar in like that i'm pretty happy with that now there it is it's locked it's already locked without any more refining it's perfect i think it's perfect what i want to show you next is how i made it a drill it's just a simple procedure i do this all the time i can use a nail to make a drill size the exact size of the nail and what we do is we just lock the bar stock i've just got some bar stock that i bought this is actually piano wire two millimeter diameter uh piano wire it's just under two mil but it's close enough and you can go down to one and a half millimeters that would be plenty going bigger than two mil was a little bulky and what we're going to do is we're going to take the uh the file and we're going to file a pyramid point on here so we're going to do one face flip over do the opposite face half a dozen strokes whatever it takes to get to the center of the bar then we turn it on its side a few strokes turn over and do the same from the other side and we'll end up with a pyramid point going to a round and those corners on that will ream out a perfect sized hole to the diameter of this piece of steel and that's what we rely on we're relying on that friction fit because it's very difficult to find a uh a drill bit that will suit the size of the steel it's some very odd size a two millimeter the wire the piano wire is a very odd size so um but you can buy the the wire the uh from a hobby shop somewhere like that you can buy a big coil of piano wire that size anywhere between one and a half and two millimeters will do so i'm going to start filing this and i've got this piece of wood in the vise i lay my steel bar rod on there and i just file one a half a dozen strokes whatever it takes to get a flat on there halfway down the thickness of the bar flip over and do the same again and what you end up with is a chisel point on there it's just a flat chisel point and we're going to go a little bit further and do the other two sides as well one two and now it looks like exactly what i wanted a point and i can use that i can put that in the drill and i can start using that to drill holes with it and that's what i want this for because this is going to pull the hole in a guide and then it's going to drill a hole for the actual pin that goes into the finished product so we're going to go through that next [Music] now that we've seen how to make the single pin marking gauge and the cutting gauge i've got two stocks i've been making different stocks but you still only need one stock so and what we can do now i'm going to show you how to layout for the twin pinned ones that make the mortise gauge set so we're going to i'm going to have a quarter inch a 5 16 to 3 8 a half inch and a three quarter inch and i'm going to lay that out on that same piece of wood where we board the single pin hole through i'm now going to bore through the other holes that i need for the twin pins so from this cord this a single pin hole i'm now going to drill a hole exactly to my quarter inch chisel distance away and then from that second hole i'm going to do the 5 16 so from that hole i'm going to do the 3 8 and from that hole the half inch and from that hole the three quarter inch because i want them to be distanced exactly to each chisel i can't take it from one datum point because the holes will be too close together so we're going to do that next i'm going to walk you through that it's not complicated you just need enough sticks of wood to work with so i i need five sticks that's what's going to give me the five extra gauge shafts that i need so that's where i'm going with this and that's what i want you to do too because then you've got a full set of a compliment if you like of of stems that will give you all you need for mortising for the rest of your life probably and the other thing is you can always add a special um stock in for a 5 8 chisel or 4 or 5 16 3 16 chisel and even down to 1 8 if you want to you can do all of these things with this and it's just nice to have as a complimentary set i think so i hope you'll enjoy it don't shape them keep them in the square because that gives you the exactness you need for getting those pins aligned right along that center line i've got all my chisels ready i've got my chisels laid out on the bench good to go i've got my sticks of wood but i'm not ready to do anything yet i need the chisels to mark out the distances on my piece of wood what i'm going to do is i'm going to offer this to the previous cross grain wall knife wall that i did that's going to mark the side of the chisel so i'll take this i'll take my knife and i'll mark the side of that one then i'll take the i'll drill that hole and then just in case it slips off center and then i'm going to take the next size chisel and do the same i'm going to work along and drill all of my holes then i'm ready to attach the piece of wood to that piece and then i can drill through and i've got my holes on the go then so i'm going to walk you through that now and you'll have to come in close to see that because it's going to be very precise that's what we're searching for we want the exactness of that um chisel distance and and if you wanted to you could move your pins slightly off at the a little bit wider than the chisel by maybe such a small amount of paper thinness or something like that because you can of course your chisel will wallow out the sides of the the mortise hole when you start cutting it always makes the mortise hole slightly bigger and therefore you need a tenon that is slightly wider so you can do that i'm going to shoot for dead on accuracy because i can always widen or do what i want to later when i'm actually in the zone cutting the mortise and tenon to fit and as you know if you've watched any of my videos you'll know that i use a router to refine a fat tenon i usually cut the tenons a little bit fatter by a fraction of an inch and then go in to refine that surface with my router and that is the pole cells technique because it's something i've used for two or three decades and i never learned it from anybody else and i never saw anybody else do it now everybody do it does it so that's great that's what i wanted so we're going to do this it's the same method for boring the hole the knife wall all the way to the opposite side boring through from both sides meeting in the middle so we get the exactness that we want i extended my gauge line from that single pin further along so i can use the same center line and i've also marked the the center the side of the piece of wood so that when i place it against this line i no longer have to have a center line on my piece of wood on my stem so i've done that just to make it easier for me so here's what we're going to do i'm going to take the smaller chisel this is the quarter inch i'm going to use that first and i'm going to take a square and my knife and i'm just going to lay my chisel directly on the original cross grain cut line so that i can get the exact mark right there then i'm going to take my square and just go across the grain like that that's the dead center now i make a nick on the corner as i've done before like that and then stand it up on end and transfer that knife nick to the opposite corner there and this i am then confident that i've gone on the opposite side as an exact marrying cert level point of course then we go with the the awl and get this point dead on those lines i need to put a gauge line further along this side there that looks good and the reason i keep pulling it out and going back in is because you can be slightly off center and the best thing is to check yourself before you go deeper so now i'm going deeper because i'm more confident that i am in line and um yeah i need to bring that uh gauge line on this side further along so i'm ready to drill that hole and i'm going to drill it i'm not going to mark them all i'm going to drill this in case i shunt off slightly then i wouldn't be able to use this one or this one if i'd already bored them so i'm going to bore those holes now with my four-sided piece and and that's how i'm going to do it [Music] do [Music] now i'm ready for the 5 16 one so knife right on the side of that chisel knife nick on the corner knife nick on the opposite side and you should always remember if you were slightly off it you know i'm talking very slightly it probably wouldn't matter that much because a mortise hall is often slightly off but what we're always striving for is that that accuracy every time so i'm i'm not admit i'm not encouraging inaccuracy here in any way and so we continue along uh with the next sizes i don't need to keep repeating this for you now i place this against this one mark the next and then i go along until i've done my three-quarter so now that we've got those holes board it's just a question of getting the different stems deciding on which one you're doing flushing end lining it up with that mark on the side that i told you about that parallel line to get it parallel and square and then centering it on and having it centered on the stock you clamp it in the vise flush the end and then take your drill bit your handmade homemade drill bit and then drill that hole and you can go from one side now it's going to get hot so be careful with your bit and you can take once you have this say halfway through you can take this off and that will give you a place for the waste wood to come out then because of course it's not a drill bit as we know it [Music] there we go align it back up put the pin through the hole to get the two aligned again like this once it's aligned and you're sure it's aligned along its length cinch it back into the vise put the drill into that same hole you just did to make sure that you're lined up and then go in for the second pass for that second pin this is how we spin the steel pin in [Music] turn it loose and now you can tap this pin to whatever distance you want and i'm just going to insert the second pin this one has not been refined yet but just to show you how it looks basically just like that so cut them to the same length and you've got your twin pointed mortise gauge isn't that great you can polish out your um needle points on a strop just on a piece of leather and just after you've sanded it or braided it maybe 250 350 500 something like that if you want to you can polish it and polish it and that's what you'll end up with is this pin and what i'm going to do next is i'm going to um heat treat this i'm going to stick it straight into a burn into a flame a torch heat it to cherry red and then plunge it into water in this case you can cut your pins to the same length just with a pair of pliers at least i think you can i did one it worked fine yeah it's coming now just roll it around once it's made the indent it'll snap no it won't i'll have to do a little bit more and be careful because when you pop this with the pliers it does um spring out of the and then you can file the ends and get them nice and level and uh insert them great so you see in the back of my hand more than the pins here so a little bit of filing on that heat treatment and we're done i just came out for a little bit of heat treatment for the safety side of it i don't want to put the flame inside my workshop garage so i'm just going to heat the points for these um marking gauge pins and that's just holding it into the flame holding them i've got two in this ice clamp just hold them into the flame until they go red just a matter of a few seconds use the tip of the flame i want the stem to be hardened most of the way along about halfway and now i'm ready to plunge and now i can polish them out again they've got the oxidation off on there the blue and such [Music] do [Music] so here's the proof of the pudding i've got my pins exactly right exactly where i want them perfect and then if you just tap that loosens you set your distance flip over tap again and then there are the gauge lines proof of the pudding and it moves it slides so beautifully along the edge of the wood so there we have it that's it what a beautiful tool that is isn't it look it's so lovely very nice i'm really happy with this so i just have the other four to do to get the full set the complement of stocks and you may of um gauges but and you may want to make two or three more gauges stocks now that you know how to do it and then you can make a rack for them stand them up in the rack and you have your gauges on their way here's one i made out of maple quite nice isn't it really single pin we're on our way aren't we guys [Music]

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 230,391

Rating: 4.8231826 out of 5

Keywords: hand tools, paul sellers, woodworking, DIY, workshop, joiner, carpenter, craftsman, crafts, furniture, joinery, Marking Gauge

Id: 2P4PhF-poJY

Length: 154min 2sec (9242 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020