Comments

1. 
   HenryBelanger | Aug 15, 2013 12:49pm | #1

   Beautiful work, Brian.

   Question for you: how exactly did you go about re-purposing the old utility blade?

2. 
   Blaylockb | Aug 17, 2013 04:58am | #2

   The method for making the blade was a little unorthodox. The biggest challenge was getting a hole in it for the screw. At first I tried to drill it, but kept either shattering the blade, or breaking the drill bit. Next, I tried to grind a hole in it with a Dremel tool using a pointed grinding stone. The process worked, but not in the way that I had imagined. I started grinding the hole, being careful to keep the grinding stone in the same spot. I was making some progress at grinding a hole through the blade when all of the sudden a blue spot mushroomed around the spot that I was grinding, and I realize that I had heated the blade to the point that it had lost it temper. The good part was that the annealed area was a small circle not much larger than the point of the grinding stone and about the same size as the hole that I needed to drill. At this point I took the blade back over to the drill press and was able to easily drill a hole through the blade at that spot. Then a cutoff blade on the Demel tool was used to get it to rough size and shape. This time I was very careful to keep it cool, so I didn’t ruin the temper. Finally, it was mounted it on a long bolt and secured with a nylon insert lock nut, put in a drill, and spun against a grinding wheel until it was round and roughly sharpened. Final honing was done by spinning it in the drill against a ceramic sharpening stone. I have made a number of these since that time and the results seem to be very consistent, and works better than any other cutting gauge I have used.

3. 
   davknecht | Nov 04, 2013 02:22am | #3

   This was fun finding this on here! Just so you know I use mine all the time and if anyone ever comes over to my house and is interested in woodworking the set you made is one of the first things I show them. Thanks and let Preston know his pictures look really nice too.