This is a right handed gauge with finger indents on the bottom. The idea is hold the gauge so that it is pulled against the work piece and then pulled (or pushed) to scribe a line.

There are three indents on the bottom.  Here, I’m using the front two with two finger in front of the beam.

One finger in front, using all three indents.

Most fingers on the beam, one on the nose. You need to be a little careful with this grip because it is easier to twist the gauge away from the work, skewing the scribed line.

Here are some photos of the finished marking gauge.

Time to replace the tidy-bowel knob. I thought a nice matching wooden knob would be nice so I stuck a piece of wood on the lathe and had at it. It looked like crap and felt about as good. I like the feel of the compression adjustment knobs on mountain bike forks, so I tried six sided scalloped with a base that would recess into the gauge body, hiding all threads. It had possibilities but as I was cutting the last scallop, it broke. Arg! So I sulked off and poked around in my miscellaneous junk hardware box. And found a chunk of rust with threads on it from who know where (probably the side of a road). With a hang hole. This suited my mood so I cleaned it up and made it all shiny. Which wasn’t the look I wanted so I decided to try “bluing”. I’d read somewhere that hold steel + linseed oil = color and protection against rust. I couldn’t find a reference but in the absence of facts, there was no way I could go wrong, right? After a false start, I did this: Heated the bolt to 450 degrees (in the oven), dunked it into a bucket of boiled linseed oil (it didn’t even smoke, let alone burst into flames, how boring), dried it off and stuck it back in the oven. with the heat turned off, and let the oven cool down and the oil cure. It has a lovely brown glaze, sorta like the thanksgiving turkey skin. I have no idea how durable it will be.

I shortened and shaped the blade holder. I also chopped the beam and mortised the holder into it. More wood, less metal. Looks better.

That big ole chunk of walnut is kind of boring. It has a lot of figure (light fiddleback, hopefully I will be able to bring it out) and quite pretty but still … So to lively things up, I added apple (Gravenstein, I think) “wear” strips. Apple is supposed to be pretty hard wood but this stuff is sap wood and doesn’t seem that hard (been playing with too much purpleheart and cocobolo) but it is harder than the walnut (which seems to be a bit on the soft side). Anyway, as usual, drew some line, made some cuts:
Used a 1/4” HS steel end mill, 2,500rpm (fastest my mill will spin). The block was clamped to the table so I could make the cuts by just moving the Y axis (forward and back as opposed to left and right, the only reason being I was able to eyeball the endmill/line standing in from of the mill).
You can see the uncut pencil lines; I made the first three cuts and went “hmmm, too much color”. Also, about that time I went “doh! if these are wear strips, I should put them where the wear will be”, which is just below the beam. Back to the mill. [Wow, the “wears” are everywhere]

Ripped the apple on the table saw and planed it for a nice snug fit. Glue sized the walnut (because I wanted to make sure pressing the strips in didn’t scrape all the glue off the sides of the slots), PVA (yellow) glue. After the glue had cured, the strips were trimmed (actually, I couldn’t wait that long but I did wait to) and planed flush.
Then the mortise was chopped (to remove the ends of the strips).  Note to self: life is much easier if you plan these things in advance. Had to do some CYA chamfering to cover up some blow out. I added a stripe through the “blow hole” just to make life difficult. I must be in a British mood, racing stripe on the hood, Brit flag on the side.

A couple of gratuitous plane shots. I used my Mighty Mini Mitre plane (M3P) and followed it up with a HNT Gordon 60 degree smoother because of the many grain reversals. You can see that the glue joint is quite good – the apple and walnut have remained glued together in the shavings. What’s that lurking in the background? An unfilled infill shoulder plane? Interesting …

A bunch of hand holding ensued, during which I changed the way I wanted to hold the gauge (slightly, I want to wrap the last two or three fingers around the bottom of the gauge), so out came the rasps and files and the shape was further “refined” (“file there, better, now file some more, stop! before you screw it up, no, three fingers is even better” …). Finally, I just said “good enough”, sanded for what seemed like days (it WAS spread over one evening and the next morning) and dropped it into the tank to get oiled.

Yea, something to actually cut wood with!

The tall diamond shaped beam is nice, the blade just barely extends past the beam, the beam can ride on the wood and stabilize the gauge and my fingers can still wrap around the leading edge of the beam.

On my bike ride today, I mulled over clever ways to hold the blade. I came up with every clever idea using expanding wedges to draw a bar across the blade to press it against the wood. And the guts would be hidden inside the wood. My guess the only thing worse than adjusting it would be making it. Punt. Since I wanted to make something, I choose this simple straddle arrangement

I milled out a U shaped aluminum (1/4” inside, 1/2” outside, 1” long with a 1/4” nose to hide the press screw in). I milled down the beam send to a 1/4” tennon. The bolt is a though bolt with threads on the other side, it pinches the wood. I cut a 1 1/2” x 1/4” x 1/16” piece of O-1 for the blade (still needs a bevel and heat treat), the front bolt presses the blade to the wood. The blade can’t twist because it the same size as straddle. Bolts are 10x24 stainless. I’ll need to replace the side bolt with a button head so it can retract into the body. Seems to work just fine, it is very solid and I can securely hold the beam with the blade next to the body. I wish it wasn’t so damn industrial looking.

Attempting to thread a dowel with die was a complete failure. I’m going to mount a router to my [metal] lathe and use a 60 degree (thread pitch) router bit to cut threads in wood (the lathe has a thread lead screw). I’ll need it to make my bench vice screw, I can also it to make little screws like the one that presses on the beam. But that is a couple of projects out.

I made this marking gauge a number of years ago after reading an article in Fine Woodworking.
 
While it is my favorite (I also have pin and wheel gauges), the wedge is a real annoyance – it works too well and makes it a royal pain to adjust (I do *NOT* like hitting my tools with a hammer). But I couldn’t think of any way to make it better so I lived with it. Then I read Christopher Schwarz blog entry on the Lie-Nielsen panel Gauge and “oh, what a nice simple solution”. Which is to use a screw to press the triangular bream into a groove, thus locking it straight. The beam can be a sloppy fit because it is the bottom of the beam and groove that matter. Loosen the screw and the beam moves easily. Plus, the ability to use a pencil is great. Looks perfect, but at $85, I’m not going to buy one when I can spend $250 of my time making one. Plus, I think I can get better ergonomics. So I poked around in the scrap piles (yes, plural) and came up with a chunk of Claro Walnut, air dried for the last 30+ years, a stick of maple (off cuts from bed slats) and a plastic screw that was used to hold a toilet seat to the bowel (now, aren’t you glad you asked?). Machine screws in hard wood work great, especially the ones with coarse threads, no need to use a brass insert (which I find to be a pain to install), unless you don’t many threads to play with.

The first order of business was to figure out where to put the beam. I put the bottom of the beam about 1” above the bottom of the gauge. which I think is minimum (use one and you’ll see why, especially with the pencil). Since I’m going to wrap my fingers around the beam, I need to shape the body to know where my hands will be so I can place the beam. Took a guess at the shape, using the old gauge as a template, scrawled some lines and used the bandsaw to make the first cuts.
 
You can see the line where I want my palm to move forward. After moving the maple stick around, I marked the placement on the body (the beam will be about 3/4” square). A centerline is drawn across the top for the screw location. Speaking of screws, might as well add that now.
 
3/8” x 16 tpi (NC, National Corse). Next, cut the mortise. Now, normal people would use a mortise machine (I don’t have one) or chop them. Not me, I have a milling machine (think giant slow speed plunge router). If I mount the body at 45 degrees, I can move the table in straight lines to cut the angled walls of the mortise.

The smallest diameter end mill I have that will cut the full depth is 3/8” so that is what the chamfer is going to be. With the mill, I have a very good idea the mortise is going to be square to the body. After playing etch-a-sketch (moving knobs) for a while, I get
 
And it is square (enough, the beam isn’t).

The hard work is done, now the fun part – shaping. Use a rasp define the shape and make it comfortable, then a metal file to remove the rasp marks, then cloth to remove those marks. I was going for a infill plane look but would up with a whale

Turpentine use used to get an idea what the color would be like. This is the front of the gauge.
Got the pencil installed, a N sized drill (0.302") works well. The Wikipedia has a pencil article, which states a #2 pencil is 1/4" inch across the flats (mine are just over). That's why the diameter is odd ball. Extra credit: what is the diameter across the points of a hexagon if diameter across the flats is 0.25? My envolope says 0.25/sin(60) = 0.29.

Next I need to make a knife and figure out how to mount it (hollow so I can put a screw through it to hold it in place?), that screw is major ugly, gotta replace it (wood?), brass rub strips?, the shape is really heavy looking, I’d like to “thin” it out. I think it will work well, it is really comfortable, the palm rest is asymmetrical and the beam is rounded so my fingers curl around it nicely.