Marking gauge tips from Joel Moskowitz

At the September meeting, Joel Moskowitz from Tools for Working Wood spoke about marking gauges.  Although there are many types of marking gauges on the market, he prefers pin gauges over cutting gauges.

Pin gauges differ from cutting gauges in the shape of the part that does the actual marking. Pin gauges have, well, pins that are relatively sharp.  Cutting gauges make parks in the workpiece with a knife edge.

Joel feels that the marks left with pins are easier to deal with than the marks left with a knife edge.  Because the pins are not knife sharp, they leave a shallower line that can be easily removed with planing or sanding later on in the project.

One criticism of pin gauges is that it is hard to make a clean line with a pin, compared to a gauge that makes a knife cut. Joel demonstrated a good technique for using a pin gauge effectively.  Instead of holding the gauge so that the pin is perpendicular to the surface of the wood, which will cause a lot of scratching and chatter as you try to make your mark, rotate the gauge so that the pin trails behind as you move the gauge, so that it makes an acute angle with the surface of the wood.  This also gives you a lot of control in how deep a marking line is left by altering the pressure on the gauge. 

New source for hardwood lumber

Log Power, a flooring manufacturer in Allentown, NJ, announced at the September meeting that they will be carrying hardwood lumber for sale to woodworkers.  CJWA members will get a discount, although the details still have not been finalized.

Joel Moskowitz at CJWA

Joel Moskowitz from Tools for Working Wood gave an excellent presentation on basic hand tool techniques at our September meeting.

He had some interesting new and upcoming products to talk about.  There is a saw vise that is nearly ready for production.  He brought along a sample of an aluminum bar clamp that he recently started selling on his website.  This clamp has the advantage of being strong and light, so that you can position it easily with one hand, which is a huge advantage when you are working by yourself.

Finally, there is a book that will be coming out this fall called “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker”,  which follows Thomas, a young teenager in rural England who becomes a woodworking apprentice.  Through Thomas’ story, the book describes the construction of various woodworking projects, starting with a packing box, a dovetailed schoolbox and a veneered mahogany chest of drawers, all with hand tools.  From Joel’s description of this book, the details of the making of these projects will be of use to any woodworker, even if you aren’t a hand tool aficionado.

The meat of Joel’s presentation was on the use of marking gauges, rasps, and saws in your work, which we’ll report on later.

Fun with a bandsaw

Here’s a fun video showing what you can make with a bandsaw in just under 2 minutes.

Christopher Schwarz: Hand Tool Boot Camp

We were lucky enough to convince Christopher Schwarz, editor of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine, to come out and give a talk that he called “Hand Tool Boot Camp”. His talk was designed to show how hand tools can make your life easier, even if you live and die by your router and tablesaw.

Chris was able to cover a wide range of material in one day, including sharpening, planes, chisels, and saws. Most of what he spoke about is going to be familiar to avid hand tool users, but there were definitely some things that I learned, so I thought I’d pass them along.

1. Eclipse sharpening jig copies. If you have one of the $10 Eclipse style jigs that are made in Taiwan, the one thing that makes them work less well is that the paint on them is too thick. The original Eclipse jigs had very thin paint. Chris suggested to take a file and flatten out the flat part where the plane blade sits, and to take a triangular file and get rid of the paint that is in the little dovetailed recesses that hold the blade. Or go to eBay and find a real one.

2. Block planes. He like to put a little camber on a block plane blade.

3. Sawing. Using a chisel to get your saw cut started really works well, much better than I thought it would. I’ve read about the three classes of saw cuts, but I always thought that taking the time to chisel a notch to get the cut started would be an interruption in my workflow, and, to be honest, less “manly” than just cutting to the line. Boy, was I wrong.

4. Sawing, part 2: His two starter saws would be (1) some kind of dovetail saw, and his cheapest recommendation would be a dozuki, and the rip vs. crosscut dozuki issue doesn’t matter, and (2) a big rip joinery saw of some sort. He had the 16” Lie-Nielsen tenon saw, filed rip. Since you can use a chisel to start a shoulder cut, you can get away without a crosscut saw.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.