Thread: A dovetail marker...

For more years than I can remember, I've used this simple & relatively crude dovetail marker, It has the two angles I use almost exclusively, and is a very convenient size for laying out medium to small components.
Original marker2.jpg

Now this gadget is perfectly adequate, and I would quite happily use it for the rest of my life. A few years ago, I made some markers out of brass angle, but despite the convenience of being able to mark the tail & the square line in one go, they just aren't as intuitive to me as my old faithful clunker.
Brass DT gauges.jpg

For some time, I have been working away on a set of Ringed-Gidgee tools, all made from the one block of RG I bought a few years ago. The stuff isn't given away, & I'm an economical old bloke (aka mean!), so I wanted to use every last scrap of the stuff. There were a couple of trimmings that were so small I couldn't think what to do with them, until I realised I could make a matching dovetail marker with them. But it needed to be a bit more blingy than my old friend, if it was to keep company with the rest of the wood from the block. So after some thought, I decided to put the blade in the centre of the stock, and inlay a couple of brass wear strips in each face.

As it happened, I had a length of 1/16" x 3/4" brass for the blade, and I reckone that thickness was about right for the strips as well. I also had a 1/16" router bit, which I have used very sparingly for inlay strips, but only in relatively soft woods. I was a bit dubious about how the tool-steel bit would stand up in hard wood, so took a gentle practice run in some she-oak. Within about 50mm the bit stopped cutting, and this is why:
Busted bit.jpg

I guess it overheated, despite what I thought was a light cut, and softened and pffft, no more 1/16th part. Originally, it looked like the 1/8" bit beside it, so you can se it was always a flimsy piece of engineering. So it was a choice of going out & trying to find a carbide bit, or going back to good old hand tools. A quick rummage in the scraper drawer, and I had a stock and some scraper steel to make a scratch stock.
Scratch stock.jpg

I had assembled a couple of bits of She-oak for prototyping, and my scratch-stock cut a pretty good groove in a very short time.
Stock grooved.jpg


So I went ahead and finished the she-oak version to iron out any bugs. That was a good move, as it turned out. Plan A was to make the grooves tight enough to hold the brass without glue, but I split one a bit when hammering in the strip, so decided in future to make them just a good press fit & use epoxy to secure them.
The She-oak version turned out ok, a couple of minor imperfections, but acceptable,and certainly more glamorous than its predecessor. I turned a retaining bolt with a very long "head" which goes right through the top piece of wood and butts against the blade, holding it firmly in place. The blade is adjustable over a very small raange, just enough to get the blade symmetrical.
New marker.jpg

And I'm even happier with the RG version. Besides getting the strips neater, I made the retaining bolt tighter, so it doesn't need a slot, just a split nut on the other end. :
Ring Gidgee marker.jpg

So all's well as ends well, & I've now pushed the boundary of how small a scrap of precious wood is useable......

Cheers,