reversible panel gauge

[chris carter]

I just made a reversible panel gauge. The rod can be pulled out and inserted backwards so I can use either a pin or a pencil. Between the screw and the rod there is a little spacer with a dimple larger than the screw which protects the rod from getting dinged up. I didn’t have enough scrap maple so I laminated some scrap cherry and I think the contrast looks nice.

I've never had a panel gauge. I always did it the hard way (a rule, two ticks, and a long straight edge) and that always sucked. This should make life a lot easier.

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[Jim Koepke]

Nice Chris, what is the beam length?

jtk

[chris carter]

The beam is a little over 27 inches because that's how long my piece of scrap was :D

[lowell holmes]

Show off! I'm impressed.

[David Eisenhauer]

I like it Chris. Is the spacer to protect the rod made out of wood? Brass? I've had it in the back of my head to fab one of these for years but it never seems to make it to the top of the list. Nice work on yours.

[Derek Cohen]

Nicely done Chris. But we do need details ...

Such as the cutting edge - what is it and how did you make it (if you did so)? How is it held in the arm?

Is the head/fence one piece or more?

What wood did you use?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Phil Mueller]

Nicely done, Chris. Made a few myself for the reason. I like your “hardware” better. Where did you source the knurled knobs?

[chris carter]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. More details…..


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The primary wood is maple. I had a scrap of surfaced maple that was exactly ¾” thick. I ripped the beam off this piece and used part of the rest for the fence. I felt like I’d need more than ¾” of reference in the mortise for the beam so I grabbed a scrap of cherry and laminated it making sure to make sure the grain of both pieces of wood was running in the same direction. I used hot hide glue with an added 15% salt because of a recent thread on the subject. It’s more salt than I’ve ever used, but I kind of wanted to see the results. After sitting overnight for a total of probably 16 to 20 hours some glue squeeze out I left intentionally was still soft. So I left it for another day and then it was rock hard. This has also been my experience with Titebond liquid hide glue in that it can take a really long time to fully cure (well, I guess hide glue technically doesn’t cure, but you know what I mean). After it was dry I squared up all the edges.


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For the mortise, I drilled it out and then pared away. I made it ¾” wide, but taller than necessary to allow for the pressure plate. Then I drilled a hole slightly smaller than my screw from the top. The screw is a brass knurled screw from Home Depot. This being a COVID-19 project I used what I had and as luck would have it, I recalled buying a few of these in various sizes for an unconventional dishwasher rack slider repair. It came with a nut that I did not use. Unfortunately I have come to discover that while the nut is solid brass, the screw is only plated so this will wear off, which is sad. I will probably go buy some extras of the same size so I can replace it down the road when it wears through the finish.


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The pressure plate is maple. It fits in the mortise along with the beam with just a tiny bit of a gap above it. I drilled a very shallow divot in the center of it to accept the tip of the screw (which is blunt). I’ve seen people do this with brass, but I saw no reason why I couldn’t just use wood – and I didn’t have the appropriate brass anyway. I really don’t think it will ever break as it would probably require tightening the screw more than I have the hand power for. But if it does, it’s obviously a less than five minute job to replace it – and if in the middle of a job, a chunk of anything jammed in there will work totally fine, if less elegantly.

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I then cut my rabbet, which was not that fun because there was some reversing grain in the maple and my rabbet plane has quite a large mouth (I need to do something about that one of these days). The cherry is thin enough that the entire rabbet goes all the way into the maple. Would the cherry wear horribly if it didn’t? I don’t know. I don’t think panel gauges get a lot of abuse, but at least I won’t have to worry about it.

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The main business end will probably be the pin. I’m not much of a fan of pencil lines. If I need to see a line better due to my absolutely horrible vision, I would rather fill a scribed line with a pencil than just rely on a pencil mark alone. I used a 6d finish nail for the pin and drill a very slightly smaller hole to house it. First attempt I was too close to the end of the beam and split it. So I cut the damage off and on my second attempt I moved back a bit further and, additionally, I clamped the end to assist in preventing a split. Then I just hammered the nail home and cut off the excess on the head side with a hacksaw. I used a mill file to file the point on two sides to give it a little more of a knife-like profile. I initially filed it very pointy like my two shopmade marking gauges, but because the panel gauge isn’t tilted which scribing it proved a little too sticky. So I did about three passes to flatten the tip a little, and then re-sharpened it. Now it doesn’t stick and very light pressure cuts a nice perfect line in the wood. I chose to do a pin over a blade because I find that pins don’t follow the grain as easily as blades do.

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The other end is the pencil. I drilled a hole for the pencil and then further down I drilled a smaller hole to keep the wood from splitting when inserting the pencil. I sized it for a No. 2 pencil because that’s what I typically use in the shop and I can always find one. I can also sharpen them to whatever line width I need. Then I cut a line down the center, which you can see is not very straight. This is what happens when you rush something because you are trying to cook dinner at the same time. I used another leftover brass screw that is smaller than the one used to tighten the beam to clamp the pencil in place. I used the matching nut on this one so there was no need to submerge a nut or anything. I think it looks really nice and it is also very easy to remove because you can spin both sides. Remove is necessary in order to reverse the beam as the pin won’t quite fit through the mortise in the fence. To reverse it I just remove the pencil end screw/nut and slide the whole beam out, stick it in backwards, insert the pencil and put the screw/nut back on – very very fast and easy.

For the shape of the fence, I drew out the shape with a compass on a piece of graph paper, cut it out, and traced it on both sides of my fence. I have a pad of graph paper with 1 inch heavy lines and 1/8th light lines (instead of 1/10) that I use for sketching out wood turnings. This made it easy to account for the offset created by the rabbet. Then I cut the whole thing out with my turning saw as close to the lines as I dared and then cleaned up right to the lines with a coase and a fine pair of rasps.

The finish was a light coat of BLO followed by two coats of shellac. Just as insurance, I also did two coats of poly just on the rabbet for a little extra wear resistance. Then everything got some paste wax. I made the mistake of accidentally waxing the top/bottom of the beam which made it a little slippery to lock down so I had to remove the wax from that area with some mineral spirits. I had also initially threaded the screw in the fence with some wax to easy the threading process and some wax got into the mortise – also not good – so I wiped that out with some mineral spirits as well.

[David Eisenhauer]

Thanks for the detailed build info Chris. Looks like a keeper. Two questions - First, will the pressure pad slide out of the fence as you adjust the beam? Hazy memory seems to indicate an old plan from someone that described some type of inner mortise that trapped a pressure pad from moving, but that was 20 years or more ago and the details are lost. Second, I forgot that a rebate was used on the fence. Do some of these gizmos eliminate the rebate and just slide along the whole inner face of the fence?

[chris carter]

Thanks for the detailed build info Chris. Looks like a keeper. Two questions - First, will the pressure pad slide out of the fence as you adjust the beam? Hazy memory seems to indicate an old plan from someone that described some type of inner mortise that trapped a pressure pad from moving, but that was 20 years or more ago and the details are lost. Second, I forgot that a rebate was used on the fence. Do some of these gizmos eliminate the rebate and just slide along the whole inner face of the fence?

The pressure plate will only slide out if you raise the screw further than the little depression. In practice this is considerably farther than I would raise it just to loosen the fence for adjustment. In other words, it stays put because the end of the screw is floating in that little depression so the plate can’t escape. When flipping the beam around from pin to pencil end, then obviously that piece will necessarily come out and needs to be pushed back in. It's easy to insert and line up because the depression kind of helps it self-locate.

As for the rabbet, I watched a bunch of youtube videos did some googling and I’ve seen them without the rabbet, but most of what I would consider the more “trustworthy” folks suggested rabbets. When I was testing mine out for accuracy I did flip it backwards to try it out on the non-rabbeted side and I can say that it is definitely easier with the rabbet. Essentially without the rabbet it’s just like my favorite marking gauge (see pic) and functions the exact same way. But because the beam is so long it is definitely easier with the rabbet than without. It’s more unwieldy without the rabbet, or rather, requires more concentration without the rabbet.
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[David Eisenhauer]

Thanks for the explanations Chris. I will incorporate both ideas when I build my panel gauge.

[lowell holmes]

I downloaded the picture and I will make one for sure.

I have a workbench drawer project at this time.

[Jim Koepke]

But because the beam is so long it is definitely easier with the rabbet than without. It’s more unwieldy without the rabbet, or rather, requires more concentration without the rabbet.

Maybe it could be made with a rabbet on both sides so the beam wouldn't have to be flipped to switch between the point and the pencil.

jtk

[ken hatch]

Maybe it could be made with a rabbet on both sides so the beam wouldn't have to be flipped to switch between the point and the pencil.

jtk

Nice work Chris.

Jim,

I could be wrong, it has happened before :), but I expect having a rabbet on both sides would require the base to be too thick for comfort and ease of use. It would be nice if it could be done, while it is no biggie to switch ends it is still a PITA to do in the middle of a job.

ken

[chris carter]

Nice work Chris.

Jim,

I could be wrong, it has happened before :), but I expect having a rabbet on both sides would require the base to be too thick for comfort and ease of use. It would be nice if it could be done, while it is no biggie to switch ends it is still a PITA to do in the middle of a job.

ken

I think you are right about the fence thickness. My fence is 1-1/8" and the rabbet is a half inch by half inch. So I have 5/8" of meat left on the fence. If I ran a rabbet on both sides, and wanted at least a half inch of meat left, then my rabbets would max out at 5/16" Maybe that's enough? I dunno as I have limited experience.

But honestly, reversing the thing is a 30 second exercise and I really don't think I'm going to be flipping it around much. Thus far I feel like I've zero'd in on kind of a standard practice which is for planed surfaces sticking with the pin and for rough lumber using the pencil.

[Mike Allen1010]

Very nice Chris – thanks so much for sharing the build details.

Personally, the panel gauge it is one of my favorite and most used tools in my shop. I don't have a tablesaw so most panels are ripped by hand. I prefer the pencil, particularly for large panels as it's less likely to follow the grain and create an uneven line. I use a 9mm wide mechanical pencil so hopefully line width is uniform. Now that you have a panel gauge with a longer arm for wide panels, I'm betting there's a smaller version in your future that will be especially handy for smaller jobs.

Cheers, Mike

[chris carter]

Very nice Chris – thanks so much for sharing the build details.

Personally, the panel gauge it is one of my favorite and most used tools in my shop. I don't have a tablesaw so most panels are ripped by hand. I prefer the pencil, particularly for large panels as it's less likely to follow the grain and create an uneven line. I use a 9mm wide mechanical pencil so hopefully line width is uniform. Now that you have a panel gauge with a longer arm for wide panels, I'm betting there's a smaller version in your future that will be especially handy for smaller jobs.

Cheers, Mike

Already there! The two oak ones were my first shop-made tools and are pretty reliable up to 10 inches before registration starts to become difficult. The Veritas one is only good for a few inches and the wheel likes to follow grain too easily, not to mention the line is almost impossible to see in a lot of wood, so I don’t use it for much outside of mortises or situations that require the cutter to be at the very end…. Or when I need three gauges set up.
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