Inlay Tools #5: Thicknessing Gauge

Once again, I went for some more of that curly spalted maple offcut. I spent some time seeing if I could figure out how to make my own tooling from a spare card scraper, my my first attemps to cut down hardened stock were a pretty big failure. I picked up the L-N cutters, since they’re only $15 and appropriately sized already, and went to town.

This is by far the simplest tool in the batch. Really, its just a block of wood with 2 cuts, 2 rabbets, and 4 screws.

I didn’t think to actually take a live action photo of the uncut wood. I’m sure you’ve seen curly maple before! I put the two cuts in that I’ll be pulling the inlay through, and lined up the cutters to verify the size of the rabbet.

Then I lined up the cutters, with extra deep holes.

Recessed the holes, remounted the cutters, and cut a fairly simple and rough mortise, for clamping the block to the benchtop.

That is really all there is to it!