Wooden marking gauges are NOT what you think.

this is a marking gauge one of the most common tools in woodworking it's so plain and ordinary I mean what could we even say about it well maybe we could say a lot because this tool didn't just live its life in the world it lived two or three lives and if we look closely at the scratches and marks on this tool we can know all about those lives we can read this tool and we're going to this is tool stories this is a high quality tool but it's handmade not factory made and we can tell that especially here on the stem these long lines show how this has been slowly planed into this rounded shape and we can just tell in general it has that handmade look high quality but also a little bit regular and it's got what we would expect in a handmade marking gauge this wedged design that anybody could make and doesn't require specialized tools and it's wedged now but it didn't start out that way if we rotate it around we can see here's a snapped off screw stem this tool started out life with a screw adjust like this Stanley this is the kind that we're all familiar with but this one snapped off and then whoever owned the tool well he wasn't a specialist he couldn't replace this screw these still could have been handmade the Taps and Cutters that let a Craftsman make screws out of wood they've existed for hundreds of years but Joey the carpenter wouldn't have had one this would have been a tool owned by a specialist tool maker it's probably where Joey bought it but when it broke he didn't let that stop him he converted it to something that he was already familiar with this wedged design and we can tell this is a modern addition by the color of the wood the whole gauge is Beach but look how much darker the stem and the stock are this wedge is much lighter it hasn't had as much time to oxidize it's much newer and you're thinking hold on a second he had the fancy modern screw lock style and he converted it back to the old-fashioned wedge style how often could that have possibly happened well honestly I think it happened a lot this is a 19th century tool and at that time tools were expensive and Craftsmen got low wages so if something like this broke there was no time or money to replace it it had to be fixed or modified right away sometimes right on the job site so work could keep going what's crazy is that even with small and simple tool like this this wedge isn't even the only modification this gauge came to me as a single pin marking gauge but that's not how it started out life if we look down on the other end of the stem we can see two holes not one they're the same size and we can tell from the file marks they've been sharpened in equal number of times so there were two pins here at the same time and they were both being used this was a mortise gauge and I know we're used to mortise gauges being in this more modern style like this this kind of adjustable gauge has movable pins and it can suit any size chisel but this is a more modern invention 100 or 200 years ago when Craftsmen owned fewer chisels well they most likely would have just had a single gauge for their mortising chisel I do my work that way too I have one mortise chisel that I use for almost all my furniture work and I've got a fixed pin gauge just for that chisel but look at this one look at the holes look how far apart they are it's more than an inch what kind of chisel was this for a big one something like this this is a James Swan socket chisel it's a full inch and a quarter wide and if I put it up to the gauge well it fits almost perfectly between these two pins this is the sort of tool that was being used you might not have a chisel like this so what's it for well this is for pounding big mortises in big pieces of wood turns out Joey the carpenter was a Timber framer and we can see the evidence of those big Timbers when we look on the stem here there are more marks that show us where the edges of those pieces of wood or rubbing against the stem while this gauge was being used they're a big distance away from these two pinholes so what we're seeing here is the gauge was used kind of like this the mortise would have been somewhere here and as the gauge was pushed back and forth defining that mortise hole well the edge of the Timber was rubbing here it was a big distance Joey the timber framer was marking some really big Timbers and then something changed maybe it happened when the Tool broke and got modified it either got given a new job or it went to a new owner either way this tool started marking much smaller pieces of wood and of course as a single point marking gauge and you can see all of that in the marks on the stem let's move this stock out of the way and everything we could want to know is right here this part of the beach here is much lighter in color and it's much darker on either side that tells us the stock was here almost all of the tools life so when it was being used as a Timber framing tool there were very long pieces of wood and they were dragging and marking the stem here but then later on it definitely got used for narrower pieces of wood and we can see clear marks right in here where it was marking those pieces and there's a lot of them and they're especially dark right there it was almost all the same size piece of wood much narrower so this was either being used for finer sort of finished carpentry work or it might have even gone to a Furniture maker somebody who was working with smaller pieces of Timber the marks on this tool don't just tell us what it was used for they also tell us how to use this tool correctly which really matters because these old wooden gauges get a lot of criticism modern Woodworkers people say oh these gauges they're they're not very good they don't really cut the wood cleanly they kind of scratch it it's just like a little finishing nail in there and they can wander out of the cut they're not accurate these days people prefer this wheel style gauge instead and believe it or not I have actually never used one of these I should they look really good I I need to try one out but I think I've never used one of those modern ones because I know how to make these work the right way I've studied the old ones and I understand a couple little things to make them work really well and all of that stuff starts with the cutter and the sharpening these old style wooden gauges get kind of a bad wrap and I think it's because Stanley and other modern companies started mass producing them and they found a bunch of ways to cheapen up the design one of the things they did is they really did just use kind of a finishing nail or something like that for the cutter and when you would buy these they generally just came sharpened to a point just like a trim nail would be and those Cutters sharpened to a simple point they really did just scratch the wood they're not great let's compare this to Joey's gauge if we look at Joey's gauge it is very different for one thing the cutter is much thicker it's three or four times thicker a substantial piece of Steel it's also been sharpened it's been sharpened a lot there are deep lines in the stock right here showing that this cutter was filed over and over again Joey was keeping the tool up and the shape he sharpened it to is just as important we can see from these lines that the file was leaned over at a good angle and the cutter was worked from both sides giving it a really Keen knife edge on top much better than just that little point we had from a finishing nail and then the top of the cutter also has a radius it's been sharpened in a curved shape like this that allows it to enter the cut smoothly and slice that grain whether it's going with or across it it's going to be effective we also want to look at the stock here and where the where lines are on the stock the line goes from here up to this corner and that also shows us combined with the cutter exactly how the tool was used on the work there's a lot of debate about whether you should push or pull these tools but I've looked at a lot of old ones and the marks on them are very clear these tools were usually pushed and it makes sense because you can register the tool against the edge of the wood like this and then with the correct cutter and the correct sharpening you can start the cut with the Leading Edge of that cutter with that curved knife edge and as the cut gets started you rotate the tool back towards yourself just a little bit and that lifts it off of that knife edge to the point and the point is what does most of the work is you go down the board it's a slicing action just like you get with a knife gauge or a more modern gauge but it leaves a really nice clear line and you can get it from a plain old marking gauge you just have to remember how to sharpen it and it's one of the things that changed when they came out the more modern mass-produced gauges they came with that sort of nail point and Crafts People they forgot to sharpen them when you look at modern ones they they don't have the file marks from sharpening people just forgot and so the gauges got a bad reputation looking at Old tools like this it's incredibly fun and interesting but it also does make me a little bit frustrated not with the tools but with modern Woodworkers me included when you look at a tool like this that was fixed and modified and fixed again and changed you're looking at somebody who knew how to make stuff happen who knew how to fix problems and get to the finish line modern Woodworkers were were often not like that and personally I cannot listen to another discussion about which alloy somebody's new plane blade should be oh should I get should I get o1 or A2 or should it be that new powdered I'm I'm fed up with that stuff because I think we all know if you buy a Quality Tool from a reputable maker it's going to be great and those different Alloys and things I mean yeah there's a difference but it really doesn't matter and I'm speaking from experience I have all that stuff and it just doesn't make that much of a difference tools like this remind us that the point of the craft is getting things done now Joey the timber framer he was a professional so obviously he faced intense pressure intense economic pressure most of us are hobbyists we're doing it for fun Rex isn't thinking about the tools fun yeah to a point what I think is even more fun is finishing pieces I think that's really fun tools like this remind us that that's possible even more than the internet and the money that we have our greatest asset is our brains our creativity and our Ingenuity we can use those things to have even more fun in the shop even when we can't afford great tools now I have a lot of old tools like this with fascinating tool marks and stories to tell I'm thinking about making tool stories into a series and you should let me know down in the comments if you'd like to see more videos like this kind of like my furniture forensics but just with old user made tools I could do a bunch of them and I'd like to so tell me if you're interested in seeing that also in honor of this video I'd like to remind you that we have the marking and measuring bundle a huge bundle of projects all with stuff like this we've got two marking gauges two squares the rubo winding sticks it is a bunch of stuff you actually get six projects for the shop and it's usually fifteen dollars but for this video we are going to discount it ten dollars for the whole bundle just for one week so if you want to do it go get it right now patreon.com Rex Krueger I wouldn't get to make these videos without my patrons how else could I make a video going on for 15 minutes about an old Mark engage without patrons it would be impossible and they get a ton of rewards click the link down below and see how you can become one of those people and get in on all that extra behind the scenes stuff this was a lot of fun to make thank you so much for watching see you next time

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 73,315

Keywords: rex krueger, diy, rex krueger shooting board, rex krueger bench, marking gauge, gauge, diy marking gauge, diy stool, diy woodworking, cutting gauge, diy workbench, wheel gauge, bevel gauge, diy small woodwork shop in your garage, marking gauge kit, diy furniture legs, using a marking gauge, diy modern furniture, modern diy furniture, center lines with a marking gauge, japanese marking gauge, how to use a marking gauge correctly, how to use a marking gauge

Id: oTA513ttrbQ

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023