marking knife for dovetails

[shim20]

what do you guys use?? is there an easy way of making one?
cheers

 

[Ironballs]

I have a pair of left/right japanese marking knives that I use, but I've seen others use scalpels, they do the job pretty well and are cheap, have many other uses (I'm not a back street surgeon!) and are also easy to replace when they dull

 

[bugbear]

what do you guys use?? is there an easy way of making one?
cheers

Normally I get by with a Stanley knife. There are some truly beautiful marking knives out there, but they fulfil a want, not a need.

BugBear

 

[Ironballs]

Actually I've also seen a dovetail saw being used by my old tutor, accurate enough and fast. Apparently when he used to work in a wood shop they were allowed 15 minutes a corner for dovetails. I spend longer than that marking up, pondering and wandering off to make a cuppa

 

[Jeff Gorman]

It is a matter of whatever most conveniently fits inside the socket, or goes round the tail when marking out.

When working to lines made from a templet, one cuts to one side of the line or the other, hence line thickness (apart from considerations of visibility and so on) does not matter.

Generally, I prefer a pencil.

 

[Ironballs]

That's true, as long as you know what your reference point is it doesn't matter too much. My seeming inability to saw in a straight line causes me far more problems

 

[newt]

If you study Joyce, he suggests that you cut the tails, do not remove the waste, mark the pin board by using the saw tip in the kerfs of the tail board. Interesting.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Tutorial here:

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/A Knife for Marking Dovetails.html

I use HSS blades and rods for the knife and awl, plus the blades are now silver soldered into a steel mortice ..

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[custard]

I bought the two Hock marking knife blades, the thin one for dovetails and the thicker one for general marking. They come as plain blades but pre-drilled with 5mm diameter holes for you to make whatever handles you'd like...or you could just wrap some masking tap around them!

I used 7/16" 2BA brass countersunk screws, and tapped a thread directly into ebony handles. This means that I can remove the handles to mark in a really tight space or, about once every year or two, easily get back to the bare blade to make a particularly thorough job of flattening the back.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

I'm afraid that the Hock blades cannot do this ...

If you are a Tails-First guy and want to cut skinny dovetails, then you need a marking knife with a blade that can slide into a saw kerf.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[OPJ]

I'm quite happy with one of Axminster's Japanese Knives, first recommended to me by my tutor. I couldn't decide which size to go for so, I went for the 15mm (somewhere around the middle, but slightly bigger if I need it) and I find quite comfortable.

 

[shim20]

cheers derek thats just what i was after

 

[Harbo]

Here's a couple I have made using ground down Stanley knife blades, brass ferules from Ray Ilse and some 3/8" brass rod cut with a split. Hole in the handle is the diam. of the brass rod and all glued in with Araldite

Ebony

Blackwood - a bit short as piece of wood was rather small!

I now have some thin gauge steel so will try one using that for a stiffer blade.

Rod

 

[shim20]

v. nice how much :lol: ?

 

[wizer]

I have used the knife Olly has but couldn't get on with it, I found it a bit chunky. So I fumbled around in my tool drawer and found a retractable craft knife. Not as beautiful as Derek and Rod's, but worked fine.

 

[Mr T]

I use a pointed knife ground from a hack saw blade, it is thin enough to get between the tails. I used to do a bit of violin making and made a number of different proflie knives in this way.

Chris