Marking and measuring is one of those really key skills that manufacturers have to understand. I see fast manufacturers, always on the go, moving rapidly between process and process, stopping, sitting and thinking carefully, taking this step just before they gallop off. They know that making a mistake here can affect their entire work for months.
So I’m going to talk to you about meter marking. In simplest terms, they are just a sharp nail sticking out of a bar with a movable butt that slides up and down the bar. Today they offer us expensive and brilliant dial gauges that really are not what we need. First of all, we need quite a few gauges, they are tools that are often set up and left until the job process is complete. So one or two gauges would not be enough, simple wooden gauges are relatively cheap, but some of the new designed metal gauges are extremely expensive.
A dial gauge is a one-handed tool. This is a key misunderstanding that many tool manufacturers fail to understand. The work is carried out in the left hand, the tool in the right hand and the gauge is adjusted to the necessary dimension by tapping the heel of the bar to give a greater distance from the material, the tip of the bar to give a smaller distance . Once the tool is adjusted to the correct distance, it can be tightened and set. Sleek micro-adjustments are an unnecessary pain deep down.
You can choose between marking gauges and cutting gauges. I use the generic term dial gauge, but most of the gauges around my bench are in fact shear gauges. Toolmakers would like you to buy a full set of each of these, which suggests that you use one to trace with the grain and another to trace with the grain. This is silly, you need gauges that leave a crisp, clean line in all circumstances. This may mean taking a small file and sharpening the pin of a marking gauge or sharpening the blade of a cutting gauge to get this sharpness and clarity of line.
Like a scoring knife, the pin or blade should have a bevel on one side only; check out my article on marking knives if you are unsure about this. The bevel should always face the waste side, so you may need some of your gauges with a bevel towards the stock and some with an outward bevel. Those of you who know me know that I am in favor of a minimum number of tools on the bench, this is a case where you need a few meters.
Looking at my tool catalogs, I still see Joseph Marples wood gauges and would recommend them. For those of you who don’t like wood gauge, Veritas wheel marking gauges are a solution. The Tite Mark dial gauge is a kind of expensive complication that I advise you to stay away from. You could buy 10 gauges of wood for the price of this over-engineered toy.
At the higher end of the market I have a rosewood gauge with nice brass fittings made by Cullen. The benefit of this tool is that the beautiful sharp cutting blade can be rotated to fit the job easily, can be projected to stick out a long way or back off. It’s a precision instrument and I think I could still buy two of these for a silly Tite Mark gauge, but it’s still an expensive toy and if I was new to this there are other tools I’d buy first.