I will be conducting a class on “Measuring and Marking” Tuesday, March 24th, 7-9pm. Every woodworking project involves measuring and marking in some way. While this may seem like a trivial subject, there is more to it than you might expect. Here is an outline for the class:
• Rulers and tape measures
• Squares
- Fixed
- Sliding
- Sizes to choose from
- Brands and quality (Starrett)
• Pencils, scratch awls, and marking knives
• Why a use a knife line vs a pencil line
• Marking dark woods vs light woods
• The “witness” line
• Marking what has been machined, what has been squared
• Marking orientation of pieces (keeping confusion in check)
• Cutting to a line
• Start with a saw, finish with a chisel or sander (maybe)
• Precision cutting to a line – using a table saw sled, using a saw tooth, using zero clearance
• Ways to hold tools and pencils to draw accurately
• Winding sticks – what they are, how to use them
• Measuring an angle
- The “Bevel Boss”
- 45 degree tools
- Drafting triangles (they don’t lose their square)
- Adjusting a carpenter’s square
- How to tell if your tool has a perfect 90 degrees
- Transferring an angle
- Sliding bevel gauges
• The magic triangle that is always square – the rule of 3-4-5 (or, Pythagoras had it right)
• Why does the end cap of my tape measure move?
• Just because somebody put lines on a piece of metal doesn’t mean they are right
• Using dividers
• Using a digital caliper
• Gage blocks
• Measuring the depth of a hole
• Drilling a hole to the right depth
• How to drill a hole where you want it (not where the wood wants you to drill it)
• Measuring vs comparing – you don’t always need to measure, just use one piece to mark another
• Using a precision reference surface – table saw, jointer, etc.
• Inches and millimeters and thousandths (oh my) – Learn them all, learn to convert them
• Own your own tools
• Wood moves! Expect it, prepare for it
• Fitting one part to another – trial and error fitting
• Getting a square glue up – Clamping a square to your piece. Measuring the diagonals. Is my table flat?
• Making patterns – cardboard, thin MDF, “story sticks”
Arrrgh! I so want to go to this class, but 7p Tues is when my son’s scout troop meets. Would someone please get on that cloning project in the Bio Dept so some of us can be in two places at once?
If Mr. Morgan is agreeable to being audio recorded, I will record his session and post it so you can at least hear what he had to say.
I have found Mr. Morgan’s presentations to be well organized (as evidenced by his outline) and full of content. I think one will be able to get a lot of Mr. Morgan’s ideas by reading his outline and listening to the recording.
Last night we went through about half of the material I had prepared. So, we stopped and will continue with Part II of the presentation in two weeks - April 7th, 7-9pm, Pillar Room. Above are the topics for that night, which we didn’t get to in the Part I class. Plus, there were lots of tools on the table we didn’t look at. I’ll bring them back (the ones not discussed)
Let me know if there is any topic (or tool) you want covered (or re-covered).
It was a very informative class with so much information that Mr. Morgan had to schedule a second class to cover all of his topics. I intend to record that class and make it available for those who want to listen to it.
As I mention in the recording, much of the presentation was showing tools and how to use them which is difficult to convey in an audio recording. You can get around this shortcoming by looking up these items on the internet to see what they look like and maybe get a description of how they are used.