The Anarchist’s Gift Guide – comprised only of stuff we have bought and used in our shop – starts today and runs over the next 13 days.
Chris started this “gift guide” years ago (read past recommendations here) after watching a woodworking TV personality’s “gift guide” for one of his sponsors. Clearly, he’d been given a list of worthless stuff that they wanted gone.
Chris thought: What if some poor spouse/child/friend actually took this crap advice?
This gift guide is – as always – unsponsored. Toolmakers who ask to be included in the guide (and they sometimes do) are automatically excluded from it. We don’t make money from these recommendations – there are no affiliate links. We paid full price for these items. And we’ve sought out at least a few things that your children could afford to buy for you.
Here goes.
Chairmaker’s Non-redneck Pencil Gauge
Last summer we made a batch of Redneck Pencil Gauges, which we still use here today. We started with a basic Marples marking gauge. Then we added a metal fence that allowed the gauge to be used for inside and outside curves. And we added a friction-fit hole so you could add a pencil (included) to the gauge.
It’s an ideal tool for marking out mortises and the spindle deck on a chair, plus dozens of other operations where a knife line or scribe line is undesirable.
After making one batch of gauges for sale, we never got around to making more. But now Marples has picked up the ball and created its own gauge, with three improvements.
- They use a brass fence instead of a steel one (it looks classier)
- They use a brass locking knob instead of a yellow plastic one (again, classy)
- And they made the pencil clamp adjustable, a nice upgrade from ours.
The gauge is available through Workshop Heaven in the U.K. for £20.90, and they ship to the States. If you weren’t able to purchase one of our Redneck Pencil Gauges, this will definitely fill that need.
(You can, of course, make your own gauge using “The Stick Chair Book,” a free download.)
– Chris
Now, it finally feels like Christmas!
fellow anarchists, I don’t want to bother Chris or Megan. I lost the article on this blog about bleaching wood and india ink for ebonizing. I swear it wasn’t a fever dream that there was a post on this. I can’t seem to find it via the search. anyone have a link to it?
It was on the American Peasant substack (and no bother!): https://christopherschwarz.substack.com/p/black-and-white-furniture-finishes
Forgive my ignorance, but in what situations would a knife or scribe line be undesirable? Thank you.
You can scribe the inside of dovetails, but always use a sharp pencil on the outside where you don’t want to deface the wood.
As Arvin says there are situations where a scribe line could be difficult to remove from a show face. A pencil also is easier to use when following curves. In situations such as saddling a seat where absolute precision is not required and a highly visible line is an advantage, a pencil clearly scores (pun intended).
Would a set of dividers with a pencil point work similarly or is do you need more precision for chairmaking tasks?