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Garrett Ellis
12-31-2009, 9:05 PM
Hope I don't get laughed at, but does anyone have an opinion on the HF mortise gauge?

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=94645

I have a project where I only need a handful of tenons, so I'm thinking about trying to hand cut them.

Jim Koepke
12-31-2009, 9:18 PM
Just my opinion...

For $10, it is not a big loss if it is the usual HF quality.

Would I buy it?

No.

If you end up enjoying hand mortise & tenon work, you will likely want to buy a better gauge.

If that happens, maybe the $10 could be considered well spent for taking you down a new road.

jim

James Davis
12-31-2009, 9:42 PM
I have one. It is a good gauge. It does not offer the screw adjustment mechanism for the width of the mortise. Other than that, it is as acurate as ony mortise gauge out there. For ten bucks how could you go wrong? If you like handtool work, it's a cheap push start. If you don't like it then you are not trying to get your money back from a more expensive tool.

James

Garrett Ellis
12-31-2009, 10:08 PM
I have one. It is a good gauge. It does not offer the screw adjustment mechanism for the width of the mortise. Other than that, it is as acurate as ony mortise gauge out there. For ten bucks how could you go wrong? If you like handtool work, it's a cheap push start. If you don't like it then you are not trying to get your money back from a more expensive tool.

James

What do you mean it doesn't have the screw adjustment? Does this mean you can't adjust the width of the mortise at all? If so, what is it preset to - 1/4"?

James Davis
12-31-2009, 10:13 PM
What do you mean it doesn't have the screw adjustment? Does this mean you can't adjust the width of the mortise at all? If so, what is it preset to - 1/4"?

The adjuastable pin is mounted on a slide that moves along the length of the arm. There are some gauges that have a screw in the end of the arm to adjust the pins, this one does not have the adjustment screw. It works like a charm. Sorry for the confusion.

James

Jon Toebbe
12-31-2009, 10:34 PM
I've got one, and it's been just fine for my light usage. I'd hand select one, if you can. I bought mine at a local Harbor Freight, and of the four they had in stock two looked okay. The brass inlay on the third wasn't flush. One of the pins on the fourth appeared to have been snapped off. As usual with Harbor Freight: caveat emptor.

That said, mine appears to be made of some fairly pretty tropical hardwood (rosewood? hard to say under the thick, junky lacquer). The adjustable pin is nice and snug in its groove. The head stays put with moderate thumbscrew pressure.

For ten bucks, a good one is a steal, and a lousy one is a waste of ten bucks. :)

Matt Evans
12-31-2009, 11:35 PM
As much as I hate saying this, this is in my shop. And, after filing the points like a marking knife rather than the cone shape they come in, it works as well as any other gauge I have.

I don't pick up many tools at HF, but the few that I have(and didn't toss in the garbage after two minutes in utter frustration) work well.

James Taglienti
01-01-2010, 1:59 AM
Honestly i have some turning tools from Windsor Design and they are actually quality steel... i had to rehandle them, the original handles were as soft as balsa wood :(

Greg Lucas
01-01-2010, 5:12 PM
If you have a Rockler in your area, you might want to pick one of these (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=21921) up instead. I much prefer this style for accurate marks and I own multiples of both styles. The wooden ones just never have worked well for me. Price being the same, I'd go for the wheel.

Rob Young
01-01-2010, 8:32 PM
If you have a Rockler in your area, you might want to pick one of these (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=21921) up instead. I much prefer this style for accurate marks and I own multiples of both styles. The wooden ones just never have worked well for me. Price being the same, I'd go for the wheel.

Except that is not a MORTISE gauge. It is a marking gauge.

A mortise gauge marks both sides of the mortise simultaneously. The best part is you can set the gauge to the exact width of your mortising chisel first and have nicely scored lines to guide your chisel.

You can mark for a mortise using one of these but it is a bit more fiddling around or you need two of them. And if you do use a cutting gauge to do the marking, I'd suggest you mark all pieces with one line, then adjust the gauge and using the same reference side on your work pieces, mark all the second mortise edges.

art san jr
01-01-2010, 9:40 PM
I have one, works fine for what I do. Was on sale for $7.00

Didn't have a 20% off coupon, oh well. Can't win them all.

Art.

Ryan Stokes
01-02-2010, 1:15 AM
I had one and ended up returning it due to it being out of square by about 8 degrees.

Greg Lucas
01-03-2010, 2:55 AM
Based on naming conventions, you are correct Rob. But since the average mortise is centered, a marking gauge works just fine as you get the same distance inward on both sides. The time it takes to set up a true marking gauge, such as the one under discussion here, is much longer also. The worst part, at least for me, I never end up with the lines nicely centered on the work. But, again, your initial statement was correct.

Rob Young
01-03-2010, 12:18 PM
Based on naming conventions, you are correct Rob. But since the average mortise is centered, a marking gauge works just fine as you get the same distance inward on both sides. The time it takes to set up a true marking gauge, such as the one under discussion here, is much longer also. The worst part, at least for me, I never end up with the lines nicely centered on the work. But, again, your initial statement was correct.

Naming, shmaming. :cool: I'm basing in on intended use. ;)

Trust me, don't keep using a marking gauge for your mortises. Get a mortising gauge. Even the hinky $9 job from HF makes it easier. You set the pin width to your mortise chisel width and set the fence for the offset. One pass and done.

If you get the HF model, sharpen the pins, this pretty much goes for any guage that uses pins. Plus you can flat their sides a little which makes it easier to set the gauge to the chisel.

And don't restrict yourself to centered mortises. That is very design limiting. There is the strength argument but really, so long as you have a least the same width of the tenon for one mortise wall, the other can be thicker. And how many elephants do you plan to have dancing on that table anyway?

Greg Lucas
01-03-2010, 1:32 PM
Rob... No harm meant but what works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone else. I had multiple MG's for quite some time before I got a marking gauge. I don't like them for, as previously stated, multiple reasons. I lay out my M&T's according to the intended use. The last few projects have had nothing but offset compound angles. I truly don't see any reason to have a mortise offset without a corresponding design requirement. That's not a limitation. It's what I feel is strongest and works best. Sorry, I'll trust myself on this one.

Rob Young
01-03-2010, 5:34 PM
Rob... No harm meant but what works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone else. I had multiple MG's for quite some time before I got a marking gauge. I don't like them for, as previously stated, multiple reasons. I lay out my M&T's according to the intended use. The last few projects have had nothing but offset compound angles. I truly don't see any reason to have a mortise offset without a corresponding design requirement. That's not a limitation. It's what I feel is strongest and works best. Sorry, I'll trust myself on this one.

OK, so to drift further from the original topic on hinky HF gauges... ;)

Absolutely no harm, just a good exchange of ideas. But I think you missed my point about the non-centered mortises. I wasn't terribly clear. There are times when you should use a centered mortise but lots of other times it becomes a design choice to NOT center the mortise, especially when you have workpieces of uneven thickness.

Simple centered example - face frame (or frame of any kind) when you want flush faces front and back. Marking this with a mortising gauge is dead easy and you can set it first to the chisel and then center it on the work piece by eye. So long as you mark the rails and stiles from the same face, it doesn't really matter if they aren't dead-nuts centered. This is leaving aside the method of work intended for cutting tenons.

Simple non-centered example - table apron, some times it is nice, aesthetically, to have a little shadow line, 1/8 to 3/16 for example between the face of the leg and the face of the apron. Again, the mortising gauge lets you mark this without making any changes to the gauge IF you have some shim stock that is the thickness of the set-back. Mark the leg without the shim, then add it to the gauge fence and mark the apron. It won't matter if you have set the gauge by eye and are off that 1/32" (but I bet you can do better than that by eye) when centering the tenon on the apron. If you don't have something to shim the fence with, you can either use a second gauge (cheap at $9, working in the original topic) or move the fence. Just don't move the fence until marking all like pieces.

(FYI, I just tried this before posting, at least the marking part. You can use twist drill bits as the shim between the fence and the stock but it is a little bit clumsy. A longer flat shim is easier because you can double-stick tape it to the fence.)

In both examples, all marks are assumed to be made from the show face. By doing that it no longer matters terribly if your stock varies slightly in thickness from end to end. In the table apron example, nobody (except furniture geeks) will ever see the back side reveal and for the face frame, well, a little quick planing on the back side (likely to be hidden) will flush it up.

Marking angled mortises and tenons can be a little more tricky but you have the choice of marking them while the stock is still square, switching to a gauge with a shorter beam (so it doesn't hit the piece), shimming the fence to the complementary angle, and switching to a gauge with a pivot fence instead of a flat face.

Now I'm curious to know what you did make with the compound M&T joints. Bet it is cool!

Greg Lucas
01-03-2010, 7:47 PM
Rob... The high chair was a lot more complex/compound...

http://jagacoustics.com/images/greg/high_chair_3.jpg http://jagacoustics.com/images/greg/high_chair_4.jpg

http://jagacoustics.com/images/greg/rocking_chair_1.jpg