To put a tapered point on a pin, just chuck it in your battery drill and spin it at a comfortable speed whilst applying the file. Takes aboout 20 seconds to make a good point. If the material is too hard for a regular file, you can use a diamond file, but slow the drill down so you don't generate too much heat or you'll wreck your diamond file quicksmart (DAMHIK).
When I were a lad, we were taught to put a small "chisel point" on out gauge pins. The edge was sloped a bit off-parallel with the stock, so that as you ran the gauge the pin pulled the stock against the work piece.
Nowadays I prefer to have separate pin & cutting gauges & like Orraloon, I make my own. There are 5 or 6 ways to lock your stock to the beam - one of the simplest & most effective being the cross-pin he showed. Possibly the worst way is to tap into the wood end-grain like on the OP's example. That is the dumbest thing to do, such threads are bound to strip, as adequately demonstrated. If you want to tap the wood, do it
across the grain, that produces quite servicable threads in most woods. But using a brass or alloy insert is a better approach.
I make pins & cutters from (annealed) O1 steel rod of an appropriate diameter. Just file the shape you like, then harden it. As someone has said, you don't really need to harden pins & cutters, just touch them up occasionally, but if you want to use your gauge as a veneer cutter or something like that, it's best to harden it.
I think I've got at least a dozen gauges, all different sizes & lengths. Over the years I've been making them I've evolved a version that has a turned & flattened beam & the pin/cutter/ pencil or whatever held in a brass tip by a grubscrew (or thumbscrew in teh case of pencil gauges), which makes them easy to remove & sharpen or adjust, etc.
Cheers,
Ian
