Old School Triangles

[Jim Koepke]

A recent visit from another Creeker brought up a question about rip sawing wood. How do you keep the cut square. My answer was that after sawing awhile, one gets a feel. Any final squaring is done with a plane.

That got me to thinking about some of the drafting tools my father made when he was in school before WW II. So I made a few 30 - 60 triangles.

30º - 60° Triangle.jpg

The thicker one makes a good guide when ripping wood.

Triangle Guide.jpg

The hole can be used as a thumbhole to hold the triangle and the edge of the wood. It is also thick enough to stand on its own if you are using both hands on the saw.

Schools must have been a lot different back in the day of making your own drafting equipment. That was before my time. Then you would draw something and make it in shop. Much more rounded than the video game world of today.

jtk

[Eric Brown]

I like them. If you put two holes, one on each short leg side, you could put clamps in to hold something square.
You could also hold them on your shooting board for shooting angles.

Jim, when you going to play with dividers?

Please keep up the good info.

Eric

[Jim Koepke]

Jim, when you going to play with dividers?

I use them often, I even used a pair to layout some dovetail the other day. I find it kind of cumbersome for that and prefer to just lay out the tails by eye and square.

I have thought of making some dividers, but that will be awhile before that project ends up on top.

jtk

[Trevor Walsh]

Nice, I've wanted to make some drafting triangles for a while. What wood are these?

[Jim Koepke]

What wood are these?

These are from ash that I am working for a bench build.

jtk

[Tom Henderson2]

Nice, Jim. And including the block plane in the photo provides some sense of size, too.

my sawing is awful, and something like this might help me hold a vertical line better. Thanks for sharing!

-Tom in SoCal

[Chuck Nickerson]

Jim, perhaps pass this on to your friend.

The specific tip that squared up my rip cuts is to keep my dominant eye directly over the saw blade.
I was instinctively not doing that so I could watcn the line.
For me, a true-running saw follows the line more naturally than I naturally hold the saw square.
So I now put my focus on the harder (for me) of the two tasks.

Of course HMMV.

[Jim Koepke]

The specific tip that squared up my rip cuts is to keep my dominant eye directly over the saw blade.

This sometimes works for me, but my problem may be due to being slightly ambidextrous. My dominant eye sometimes is my left eye and sometimes it's my right eye. Most of the time it isn't a problem and it seems to be somewhat controllable.

Using a fat triangle as a guide was mostly a way of having a use for a piece of scrap. It did help me to get on square.

jtk

[Steve Q Brown]

Watch the saw... when the reflection of the work is aligned, you're at 90 degrees. If your saw plate doesn't reflect the image clearly, clean it up.. it'll cut faster too.

On topic- I think shop-made tools are great. Making ones' own drafting squares is good practice and gives some useful tools for the effort. Hurray for real wood working.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I think I'd find this particularly helpful for roughing in beveled angles, (when you're ripping a board in two at a bevel, rather than just drawknifing or jackplaning the square edge of a board).

The saw plate reflection thing is good too, but a couple of my panel saws don't are dull enough that doesn't really work, so this might be helpful.

I always have to remind myself to pay a little more attention when I want the cut to be closer (as opposed to rough break down of stock to manageable size) I often just start cutting and can feel plumb pretty darn well without really looking - the problem is nothing in my house is quite level - at least, I kept cutting to the left a little bit, and then to the right a little bit when standing on the other side, so that's what I'm blaming. Taking the time to remember to look before I start, and I have no problems, it's just remembering to take that minute . . .