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Japanese Marking Gauge

by Ross Orr

http://www.hidatool.com/woodpage/marking.html
$35 (US, estimated)

Tool photo.

It comes up often enough in the shop: You want to mark a line X inches in from the edge of something. You end up futzing around with tape measures, pencil tick-marks, and straightedges--but still aren't sure you got it exactly right. Well, Japanese woodworkers have been worrying about this problem for a few centuries longer than you, and have evolved a better way: the marking gauges called kebiki.

The kama kebiki type has a comfortably rounded oak grip, and two (retractable) steel knives for scribing lines. Scoring cut-lines in wood reduces chip-out; and strips of thin veneers, plastics, etc., can be sliced off directly. Plus it's one of those special tools that gives you pleasure just picking it up.

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Not just the Japanese
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Western woodworkers have also been using some similar tools for centuries, if not millenia:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=50440&cat=1,42936

Actually, the one in the picture there looks more like a "mortising guage" like these Western-style ones:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=32621&cat=1,42936

(I hope these links work, they may be dynamic pages that will disappear.)

Posted by captainjaroslav on August 02, 2006 at 10:12:18 Pacific Time