Making my first panel gauge and have a few simple questions

[Alan Schwabacher]

The ones with the wedge running crosswise to the beam are nicer to use than those with the wedge running along the beam, in my opinion. You can set the distance, and tighten by squeezing in the wedge without risk of changing the setting.

Lots of beam cross sections work fine, if you round or chamfer any potentially sharp corners. If you use a square, just wedge so as to push diagonally into a corner. You can even use a round beam with a single flat for the wedge to engage, and the cutter will remain pointed in one direction. Then you can drill the mortise.

[Winton Applegate]

I am open to critique / criticism. It is dry here in the Wild, Wild West so perhaps this wouldn’t fly in England or the more humid or changeable parts of the world.

On the end of the maple gauge I used a blue lumber crayon to show the grain curvature and direction. I was enjoying the saw tooth texture on the end contrast with the super smooth and subtle grained faces so I didn't plane the ends.

The short marking gauge in the first photo is probably the first one I ever made or maybe the second. I made it when I was practicing and learning mortising by making my cutting table out of 2x4s. (The first thing I learned was don’t make stuff out of 2x4s) It is a dedicated mortise gauge to go with my big honkin’ mortise chisel so like the chisel is not going to get a lot of use right ? So the most basic and close to hand materials were just fine for this gauge. Functionally it turned out better than bare necessity.

I am not recommending you make your panel gauge as I made this first one but I was fooling around with it today and noticed it is “unique” in two respects.

• First ha, ha, the beam is made from a strip of particle board (the fence is a cutoff of 2x4). How’s that for going all out on materials?
• Secondly the beam still fits perfectly in the fence meaning when the “set screw” is loose it is snugish but moves with a slightly more than light tap on the bench or with a hammer. The set screw is a machinist T-bolt that is normally used by machinists in T-slots in the machine tables for hold down duty. Here it threads into a brass threaded insert designed to put an anchor of machine threads into a wood base.

The marking pins near the end of the beam are the exact width of the mortising chisel.
Soon after I made this . . .
The second gauge I put much more thought and materials and effort into.
Patterned after the Japanese style and I think I made it after being inspired by a FWW article.
Flat beveled, steel, round, marking pin in one end and in the opposit end a hole that fits a regular pencil tightly. Ignore the direction of the pin/pencil hole and the wedge and the beam rotation. I know the slightly skewed metal pin should pull on the wedge to make it tighter in the fence in use. I was trying to show all the features while using as few photos as possible.

Made from roc maple. I think this is a good material for a long gauge like this. Well not long but can always make longer beams for it.

I didn’t put the rabbit along the edge of the fence as discussed here but I could see how that could be useful to clear surface features in the work being marked; might require a different configuration of the marking tool. As with the longer beam I figured I could always add that.

The rectangular tool adjusting hammer also shown works particularly well with this gauge. Oops I guess I need to include another photo after all.

[Mark AJ Allen]

OK I understand now. I would think the rebate is easier to control; both surfaces of the rebate will ride on the panel. If there is no rebate, it the gauge needs more control to prevent the beam from touching the panel. Not a huge deal I guess.