Most people don't have a marking gauge, and don't even know they need one! These are great tools that can improve the speed and ease of marking out your projects.

While it's fairly easy to make a traditional marking gauge, I wanted to design something that can be made very quickly and easily by anyone with basic skills and tools.

This project should only take a few minutes to make.

Supplies

A piece of scrap wood
Some doweling
Threaded insert and bolt
Washers
A screw
Some wax
A drill bit the same size as the doweling
Drill or drill press
Hole saw or saw
Sandpaper

Step 1: Cut Out the Frame

The quickest way to cut out the frame is to use a hole saw, you can saw this out and rasp or sand it into shape. Of course, you can just saw a square or rectangle out, it doesn't need to be round.

Step 2: Drill the Main Hole

Now drill a hole through the frame using the drill bit that matches the diameter of the dowel.

Step 3: Drill the Screw Hole

Now carefully drill a hole through the side of the frame to and screw in the threaded insert

Step 4: Prepare the Dowel

Now cut a length of dowel to about 200mm long. You need to find the centre on one end and mark it, then carefully drill this with a small drillbit. This to stop the dowel from splitting when you insert the screw

Step 5: Make the Marking Blade

Now use a washer that is a little bit larger than the diameter of the dowel to make the marking blade. While this can be carefully filed by hand the quickest way is to use a bolt to mount this in a drill and spin it against a file or sandpaper.

Most washers are stamped out of sheet metal and normally have one flat side and a slightly rounded side, you need to keep the flat side flat and file down the rounded side to a cutting edge.

Lastly, polish the flat side of the washer with a sharpening stone or some fine sandpaper.

Step 6: Screw on the Marking Blade

Since the hole in my washer was too big to keep it centred around the screw I inserted a couple of smaller washers to pack it out a little. You can rub wax on both sides of the blade to stop it from binding. Now place another washer that's a little smaller than the blade on and screw it together.

Be careful how much you tighten the screw, you want the blade to be able to spin freely but still be firm enough to not wobble to the side.

Step 7: Assemble

Now just insert the dowel into the main hole on the frame. Put the matching bolt into the threaded insert and use this to clamp the dowel to the correct length you want to mark.