Hello,
Is it better to buy a 10″ sliding bevel or a 3″ sliding bevel? or perhaps both. The 3″ would be great for laying out dovetails. But I also want to be able to mark off lines on wide boards. Are there any particular brands that stand out.
When it comes to choosing a Marking guage for marking out dovetails which guage is better, the guage with the wide cutting knife or the marking guage with the pin? I’ve heard that the cutting knife guage is better because it cuts a much finer line. I always thought marking guages came with measurements on them but when I was looking up tools on the LeeValley website I noticed that there were no markings. How much should one expect to pay for a quality marking guage?
Wanda
Replies
It's properly spelled g-a-u-g-e. Not to be pedantic, but misspellings and mispunctuation (as well as those sins of the internet age, all caps and all lower case) make messages difficult to read.
Starrett
Brown & Sharpe
Either bevel gauge is fine for marking dovetails, Wanda, or even a dovetail template, which can be bought off-the-shelf or home made out of plastic, aluminium, etc.. The smaller version of the bevel gauge might be useful in tight corners, but I can't recall ever really needing one in something like a quarter of a century of making furniture for a living. That's about all. Oh, don't forget that both a straight and parallel edged stock and similarly accurately made blade are really quite important for obvious reasons.
Marking gauges and cutting gauges are for different jobs. Simply put, a marking gauge is for gauging distances in from the edge of a piece of timber along the length of the grain and across end grain. The cutting gauge is for marking lines cleanly across the grain, such as for marking the shoulder line of handcut dovetails. The marking gauge will leave an unsightly torn line across the grain, although some workers modify the point into a knife profile parallel with the stock. Another version of 'marking' gauge is a mortice gauge which has two points, the outer one fixed, and the one nearest the stock adjustable to match the width of a variety of chisels-- the better ones have a knurled knob at the far end of the wooden shaft of the tool for making precise adjustment to the position of the inner point in relation to the fixed point. Marks on the shaft of the gauge are superfluous. A 150 mm (6") rule is all that's needed to set the distance between the point(s) and the stock.
A perfectly servicable beech cutting gauge can be got for as little as $15, about $12 for a marking gauge, and a very nice rosewood mortise gauge for $35- $40. More than adequate bevel gauges can be had for less than $20, and up to ~$30. All prices suggested are for brand new.
There are other somewhat specialised gauges out there too, but I'm not getting into that, and there's a host of 'designer' mantlepiece trophy gauges with scribing wheels and other nonsense costing a bundle that in my limited experience with them seem to work no better than the old fashioned standards. slainte, RJ.
Great advice from Sgain, This is what I use, and it's a great gauge.
http://www.starrett.com/catalog/catalog/groupf.asp?groupid=212
This also has a protractor that works with it for a bevel protractor.
Don
Edited 8/30/2002 9:12:01 PM ET by Don C.
Hello,
Thanks for sorting that out for me. I was under the impression that a bevel was an absolute necessity. What would you use instead of a bevel to mark out a dovetail? I suppose with the invention of power tools most furniture today is put together using rabbit and dado joinery.
How much experience do you have with dovetails?
Wanda
How much experience do you have with dovetails?
Please be tactful, Sgian.
Edited 8/30/2002 9:48:24 PM ET by Donald C. Brown
Sgain,
I'm sure you've been asked this before, but I checked out RJFurniture. What is your relationship with the site or is Sgain a moniker for the board, or????
Great work by the way.
Don
Sgian Dubh is just a handle Don. A couple of years ago, I used to be much more secretive and used perhaps as many as ten handles all at once. One of my favourites was Oban Teuchter-- I may have to bring him back to life one day, and I liked my old mate Jed Reiver too. Slainte, RJ.RJFurniture
Well, as far as I'm concerned, as long as you keep displaying talent like that and still care enough to share, you can call yourself whatever you like. Thanks for the inspiration.
Don
Well you do need something to mark the rakes of the tails or pins, and a bevel gauge is the standard tool, but as I said before, preset dovetail rake marking gauges can be bought off the shelf, or they can be fashioned out of various materials, such as plastic, aluminium, etc.. Off the shelf types are usually pre-set at rises of 1 in 6, and 1 in 8--- something like that, but an adjustable bevel can be set to whatever rise you want.
As to my experience in making dovetails of various sorts, maybe just enough I’d guess, and maybe still not quite enough in the whole scheme of things, ha, ha. Slainte, RJ.View ImageRJFurniture
In a case like that, do you take the work to the router? Or the router to the work?
Hmm? That's a very good question Colleen. Do you need an answer? Slainte.RJFurniture
I've noticed Starrett squares mentioned twice in this string. I agree they are wonderful lay-out tools, but the cost can be prohibitive (and the imitations are junk!). I finally found a guy on EBay a month or so ago who had about a dozen of them (12" with square head, protractor, and center finder) still in the box for $90 each. Of course I bought one and threw away my el-cheapos. I guess it really is worth waiting until we find what we really need/want.
Jeff
PS. I find the distinction between what I need for my shop and what I want becoming less clear as time goes on. I fear I may soon need a restored Oliver planer... Can one take out a third mortgage???
Edited 9/1/2002 9:28:33 PM ET by Jeff
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