Marking Gauge/Wheel, Dual Veritas, Help Me Decide.

[Patrick Irish]

I'm getting my daring in my mortise and tenon joinery and want to add some accurate marking and layout tools to my arsenal.

I was about to buy a $17 marking gauge/wheel on Amazon with a graduate scale BUT then came across the dual Veritas one that looks really sweet and make setting up mortise and tenons a snap. It doesn't have a scale on the bars though which I thought was a miss.

I then saw the wood marking tools and got started getting confused. Didn't want to buy several that overlap in task.

Which should I be looking at?

[Ben Rivel]

Where you referring to this one from Lee Valley: LINK, LINK?

Not sure how much you want to spend, but I have compared several of these marking gauges including the Lee Valley, Woodpeckers and Jessem and IMO the best by a pretty good margin is the Jessem Wood Sabre Marking Gauge (LINK).

[Lloyd McKinlay]

No help on the decision but either of the Lee Valley items qualify for free shipping thru the 17th.

[lowell holmes]

I am totally satisfied with my Lee Valley Veritas marking gage. I have no experience with any other. This is not rocket science. If you like one over the other, buy it.
The worse thing that can happen is that you end up with multiple gages.

[Prashun Patel]

Personally, I'd get 2 gauges instead of the dual marker. I just find two easier to use in hand.

Also, I never use the graduations on the shaft.

I've used the Veritas microadjust, and the Taylor Tools knock off of the Glen Drake model. I find the micro adjust style unnecessary. For my money, I prefer the simplicity of the standard wheel gauges. Just buy several replacement wheels and don't be stingy about replacing them whenever you feel it start to dull.

[Matt Day]

... the best by a pretty good margin is the Jessem Wood Sabre Marking Gauge (LINK).

Holy marking gauge Batman! It doubles as a mallet too!

Seriously though, that Jessem gauge looks to be beautifully made and I really like the adjustability, but I mainly use mine for dovetails and don’t see why you’d need to extend it to 4-5” or however long it can go.

[Mike Henderson]

The graduations on the shaft are essentially useless. Don't make a decision based on that and don't pay more for a marking gauge with graduations on the beam.

Unless you're going to do a lot of tenon work, I'd just get a single blade marking gauge. With that you can mark tenons - it's especially easy if you're centering the tenon. Just mark from both sides.

Mike

[Patrick Irish]

Im gonna go with an Igaging 3 in 1. It’s $22. The jessem looked sweet but was reading that it can pull back on measurements that get close to the fixed increment position. Plus $98 is a lot. I’ll get the Igage and a marking knife for under $40 shipped.

Edit: Amazon reviews say it’s plated and sucks. The cutting wheel doesn’t spin.

[glenn bradley]

I am in the 'graduations are pretty useless" camp. I thought they would be helpful but, find I completely ignore them. Contrary to others I find the micro-adjust feature to be very useful. I have a couple of Veritas, a Taylor and another (Shop Fox maybe?). I do prefer the shaft being offset like on the Veritas stainless steel version. If they added the micro-adjust to that I would have everything.

[Derek Cohen]

The Veritas SS limited edition (mentioned by Glenn) was made briefly a few years ago. I grabbed a couple. They are among my favourites ... I use gauges a lot (to transfer dimensions rather than measure anything).

The other two gauges I will recommend are the micro adjustable Tite-Mark (get the original model, not the knock offs), and the Veritas model (see below).

One of the ways to use a gauge us to "drop" the depth/thickness, so ...



One does not need digital readouts! Really, that is an over complication that will make this tool harder to use. As Prashun mentioned, get a couple of gauges. I have a "few" because they replace the need to measure when one works primarily with handtools ... well that's my story and I'm sticking to it!



It looks a lot, but not to a hand tool users. In any event, I built half of these.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Mark Blatter]

I have a few of these old Stanley guages. Use them for marking dovetails and M/T. They work pretty good and the price is low.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Mark

Pin gauges, such as your Stanley, are best when used with the grain or across end grain. In other words, they do best when marking tenon cheeks and the outlines of mortices (both ideally marked from the same gauge). They are especially lousy when scoring across the grain, such as for dovetails, as they will tear the wood.

Pins can be modified into a knife ...



I have built many of these ...



The best gauges for dovetails or tenon shoulders (scoring across the grain) are either wheel gauges (such as the Tite-Mark or Veritas) or cutting gauges (such as Japanese knives).

Japanese gauges, such as the legendary Kinshiro (the larger one below), have double knives (but may be used individually)...





I've made my own single blade versions ...



Three mortice gauges, one by Veritas, another by Kinshiro, and a third of my own design (uses drop in fixed-width blades) ...






Here are the Veritas SS anniversary gauges mentioned in an earlier post. Great heft in the hand. Adjusted with a finger tip.



Regards from Perth

Derek

[Nick Decker]

This quickly turned into one of those "You cost me money!" threads.

[Mike Henderson]

Im gonna go with an Igaging 3 in 1. It’s $22. The jessem looked sweet but was reading that it can pull back on measurements that get close to the fixed increment position. Plus $98 is a lot. I’ll get the Igage and a marking knife for under $40 shipped.

Edit: Amazon reviews say it’s plated and sucks. The cutting wheel doesn’t spin.

If you want a micro adjust wheel marking gauge at a reasonable price, check out the Taylor tools clone of the Tite-Mark. I have a couple of these. The Taylor Tools version has more lash in the threads and the cutting wheel is not as good as the Tite-Mark but it's very serviceable.

The Tite-Mark cutting wheel fits the Taylor Tools so if you want to replace the cutting wheel, buy a Tite-Mark replacement cutting wheel from Kevin Drake and put it on the Taylor tools. I think the Tite-Mark cutting wheel is about $10 so that will take the Taylor Tools to $40, which is still less than half the price of the Tite-Mark.

Mike

[J. Greg Jones]

Edit: Amazon reviews say it’s plated and sucks. The cutting wheel doesn’t spin.

The cutting wheel should not spin on a quality marking gauge-it's designed to be locked in place.