Marking Gauge... Almost

I received Tool-Making Projects for Joinery and Woodworking: A Yankee Craftsman's Practical Methods by Steve A Olesin for Christmas this year (I would have linked to the authors site but he died in 2006). I read the introduction and took a look at the first project, a marking gauge! I was intrigued that it was a reproduction of an American colonial era tool. The assembly was pretty straight forward and I figured it was a good place to start, I was looking at buying one of these anyway. I had some paduk and hard maple laying around from previous projects that would fit the bill nicely.

Making it went pretty smoothly and I pressed some recently restored hand planes into service. I did change a couple things in the design. I angled the upper slot which receives the sliding toggle and matched the angle on the toggle. I also made the beam much longer to make the tool more versatile. I cut the blade from an old saw blade, filed, ground, and beveled it.

Everything seemed pretty good at first, but as i slid the toggle more and more, I had to push it further and further in. Now there is not a lot left to slide if it deforms any more. The beam has a tiny bit of left/ right play which kinda makes it useless as a precision marking gauge. This problem is magnified when the beam is slid out the full 18 inches.

So what I have is a serviceable marking gauge that doubles a t-square. Not too bad. I cut enough parts to make 2 of these things. I might modify what I did a bit more on the next iteration.

All in all: a great use for some old scraps. The next project in the book is a dual beam marking gauge using knurled knobs, the sliding toggle is nice, but metal is better :)