Thread: How to cut narrow slot in timber?

Originally Posted by auscab

.......And when the customer comes in to pick up the job and asks how did I do it , I would be telling them a story about making the tool for the job the way they did it back in the 18th century , and how the old way takes time . and that they had better take a seat because I'm about tho give them the bill..

The bill is mainly for the story, I presume, Rob?

It's interesting that scratch-stocks don't seem to get anywhere near the attention & use they deserve. I have to confess that I knew about the principal for quite a long time, but thought they were just a mediaeval form of finger-torture dreamed up by people who didn't yet know what electrons were for! Then one day I wanted to make a quirked bead on a contoured edge, which no router or shaper could manage. Of course, that's a situation where a scratch-stock excels, so after some lengthy head-scratching & other avoidance tactics, I eventually decided to give one of these scratch-stock thingies a go. IIRC, it took me a lot longer than 15 minutes to make it & another while to get it working well, but you're not exaggerating when you say it takes virtually no time to do the actual job once you've got it sorted (& I can make one in a few minutes these days, too ). Of course, it depends on the wood to some extent, very soft or highly figured woods can give you a bad time, but by luck my first attempt was on a very co-operative piece, and I was very pleased with the result.

There was an article in AWR which featured a scratch-stock a year or two back. The author's version was a Rolls-Royce model & very well made, but a perfectly functional tool can be cobbled up from scrap wood, a couple of bolts or screws, and some old saw-plate, in a few minutes. I keep a selection of chainsaw files of various diameters for making the cutters. I usually don't bother stoning or refining the edges, just use them straight off the file. If you have many metres of profile to make, you may need to re-sharpen, but it always surprises me how far you can get before that's necessary.

Cheers,