Czeck Edge Kerf Kadet- Review

A marking knife is a simple tool- or is it? My first marking knife was an craft knife. This worked pretty good, but had an old dull blade, and was not long enough to mark in between dovetails. So then I made a marking knife that I blogged about in February. That was okay, an upgrade from the craft knife, but it had two major flaws. The first is that the tip of the blade was rounded, not pointed. At the time, I didn't realize it was that important. With a pointy blade, less of the knife has to be in the work to scribe the same depth of a cut as a rounded tip. This enables the knife to not stray from where you want to mark as much because it's less likely to follow the grain. The second flaw was that it looked terrible. Okay not that big a deal, but it annoyed me.

So now we come to the Kerf Kadet. Mine is in Macassar Ebony- $41.95. Let's start with the blade. It's 0-1 steel and is 1/32" thick and 1 5/16" long. This is a very nice set-up, all bevels are very crisp. The blade cuts very cleanly.

The handle's grain is more visible that I expected, never seeing this ebony before in person. It is very striking(no pun intended) has a great shape and has a very attractive finish. The bronze ferrule is very nice too.

Shown here are test cuts in pine and walnut.
A good marking knife is very important in the shop; it's more accurate than a pencil, and will even help you saw straighter. I highly recommend the Kerf Kadet from Czeck Edge. It is available from Czech Edge, and Craftsman Studio.






P.S.-shoutout to cornell dairy customer!

The Legs Are In

The top is all done, dogholes are cut, and tenons are glued and pegged with 3/8" oak pegs. I made a lot of progress on the bench's undercarriage, the legs are mortised into the top with 1" long tenons, those blocks coming out of the top of the legs will be lag-bolted to the top. They too are mortised to the legs. The legs in the rear photo might look weird. That's because I goofed and on the right, I made the mortise's edge at 16" from the end (correct), but the left one was 15" (incorrect), so the stretcher was offset in order to be parallel. I bought some 2" hickory for the vises. I also bought some more tools, a LN 102, and these microplanes, which I used to shape this handle (which is still in progress). That's all for now, I am now going to focus on the wagon vise.

Refinished #6

I recently bought and refinished a Stanley #6. I used the techniques illustrated in these three sites:
Plane Fettling
Rex Mill Hand Planes 101
Hand Plane Restoration
Pictures from before I started are here-Ebay

Bench Work

I did a lot more work on my bench, I crosscut the beams to length, and chopped sixteen 7/8" wide, by 1 1/2" deep, by 2" long mortises. It was fairly easy, I just drilled two 3/4" holes, and chopped out the rest. The pine was pretty soft, so this went along quickly, and I didn't worry about bruising the sides, as they won't be seen. I then fitted the 8 loose tenons, they are white oak left over from the footstool project. I then turned to the dog holes, 3" from edge to edge of each other. They are 1" square, and angled slightly towards the wagon vise. Here's how I make their doghouses.
Two sawcuts, another saw cut, another sawcut, chiseling out waste, then cleaning up with router plane.Since it is cross-grain, it is best to use a V-blade, but mine isn't very sharp yet (more about that in another post), so I used the 1/2" straight blade, and scored the corners of this dado with a knife.
More distractions-Gramercy Handlemaker's rasp with hand cut teeth,
-1/4", 3/8", 1/2", and 5/8" #50 cutters that I got from ebay for very cheap, and they were practically like new. I highly recommend their seller-gandmtoolsales.

Today Was a Good Day

Alternate titles:
Power Tools Are Fast
On the First Week of Christmas( I made up lyrics, but they didn't make the cut)

Today was a very good day. I got my top milled, (thanks to Chris) and my package from Lee Valley arrived. I also got my hair cut, but I don't think anyone really cares. The beams turned out even nicer than I thought, Chris was kind enough to mill all the boards really well. They turned out to be about 3" thick, and about 5" wide. Perfect!
Just as we were coming home, my fedex package arrived. (Side note, free shipping until the 19th from Lee Valley.) I got rulers, router plane blades, a dial caliper, a book, letter+number stamps, protractor, plane blades, countersunk washers, and some dehumidifiers.
I took the beams to the shop, and figured out an orientation for the boards. Check out the streaking on this one piece-

Stanley # 50 and Drawer

At an antique mall, I recently spotted a Stanley # 50 beading/plow plane. I expected it to be way out of my price range, but it was marked at $26, which is an okay deal, only that it was missing its beading depth stop, normal depth stop, one nicker, and all of its blades. When I disassembled it I lost the other nicker. Damn. The only parts I really need however are the depth stop and the blades (duh). I've ordered some off ebay, and they should be coming soon.


Since I haven't really been doing much woodworking recently, I decided to make a drawer for practice. It's all made of pine that I re-sawed from scrap from my workbench, and about 1/2" thick. I think it turned out well, except for a couple of things. First, I glued the drawer front on upside down. The other goof-up was less controllable: there were some gaps in my dovetails. I made the drawer-bottom grooves with a chisel, but this turned out kind of raggedy, but not too bad. Now I have to think of something to put in it...


One more piece of news, with all the dovetail chopping, I managed to bend my chisel, which is my favorite chopping chisel- it has great balance and sharp side corners. I don't know why this would happen.