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I've been putting off handcutting joints due to lack of a decent marking knife. Ok i'm weird, I know, but still.

I've had this pallet wood board for some time, and I guess I never looked that closely at it because I thought it was oak. Turns out it's beech. I'd never worked with beech so I cut it around the cracks and got a few cool boards for a box or something with some light spalting.




I found myself fascinated with this wood, which is very dense and pretty dang hard, turns and finishes well and has a nice grain that is relatively easy to work. I couldnt bring myself to put the scraps down, i just keep sanding up little blocks and knife blanks and such.

Then I cut a pen blank size off of a scrap piece of the pallet board, threw it on the lathe and turned a marking knife handle. Finished that with sanding to 2000 and Mylands sanding sealer & friction polish.

The salvaged jigsaw blade was ground on the 6" grinding wheel, coarse then fine. I cleaned it up with an oil stone, coarse and fine diamond cards and a leather strop with flexcut gold compound. I left a tiny bit of the saw tooth on one side, because, well, we should always remember where we came from :)


The copper was some scrap piping i salvaged from the metal shop next door at some point in the past. Sanded that from 600 up to 2000, then polished with the strop.

I slotted the tenon for the blade, put the ferrule on (it was snug) and just epoxied it all together. Not a show piece, but it will work for me. The blade is SHARP, and should stay pretty sharp; the high carbon steel of the jigsaw blade takes a nice edge.

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Comments

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4 Posts
Good marking knife. This is just the tool that I'm needing at the moment. I am going to make two of them, the other one is for my buddy Sammie.

Thank you for sharing.
 

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4,567 Posts
Nice marking knife! That beech wood is very nice to work with and it is really beautiful when it is spalted. Leave some of it on the ground for a while and look at it in few months!!
 

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11 Posts
nice, I'll have to see if any of my oak pallet boards are beech as well, thanks for posting.
 

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7,502 Posts
Nice one. I just used a piece of saw blade that I had made up over a year ago for a marking knife. I'm so slow, I still haven't made a handle for it yet. Sheesh, I'm s-l-o-w ! lol. Thnx for your build/s, and reminder for me to make a dog gone handle.
 

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710 Posts
Thanks dudes. Roger the handle is the EASY & fun part! Get to it! Ya dont even have to turn it, but its more fun I think.
 

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2,242 Posts
Great reuse of the saw blade
 
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