♪♪ A big part of woodworking is the skillful use of tools.

And as woodworkers, we can actually make some of those tools and increase the joy that we have when we're building projects, when we're using tools we made ourselves.

So, on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're going to do just that -- build three tools that you can employ on just about any project.

Chris is going to make a brass hammer, Logan is going to make a panel gauge from ebony and steel, and I'm going to start with your ordinary framing square and make a large layout square that not only tackles square assemblies, but also angles, as well.

If you want to make one or more of these yourself, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's time to dive into the shop and get building.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Man: Old Masters, offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

Announcer: And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Announcer: Additional funding provided by... Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

Announcer: And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Now, some shop-made tools start off from scratch, like you're cooking bread at home, and some can start with a couple of pre-made ingredients, so to speak.

Kind of like buying a rotisserie chicken and going from there.

That's where my tool is going to start with, and I'm using a framing square as the starting point.

Now, these are typically used, like you might imagine from the name, in construction, and everything that makes them perfect for construction -- lightweight and portability -- makes them less than ideal for woodworking in a shop.

So, for one, it doesn't really stand up on its own.

And if you try and register the square against an edge, it just kind of dangles.

So, what I want to do is turn this tool into something that's more appropriate for the kind of woodworking that I do, and here's how it's going to work.

I'm going to make and install a pair of hardwood side pieces that will attach to the blade and allow it to stand up on its own.

The other thing that that does will allow the square to register firmly against an edge for marking and measuring lines square and parallel to those edges.

But we don't have to stop there.

We can kind of expand on it with adding a few other features.

I'm going to take a piece of aluminum bar stock, add it to the end, and use it as a large bevel gauge for laying out angles.

And then one other piece of aluminum I want to add is a small tab that can slide up and catch on the edge of a piece, so it's not going to tip and fall over.

So, we're going to turn this from a construction tool to a fine woodworking tool.

The first thing that we need to do is take our wood cheek pieces, go over to the router table, and cut a pocket for the bevel gauge.

Alright, to make this pocket, what I've done is installed a straight bit here in the router table.

The height of the bit matches the width of my aluminum bar stock here.

And then its projection from the fence matches the thickness of the aluminum.

On the workpiece itself, I've put a layout line to show where I want that pocket to start.

So, what I can do then is turn on the router table.

I'll push the workpiece against the bit and then slide it along to make the cut coming out on the end of the workpiece.

Alright, we're going to stay at the router table for the next step.

What we want to do is to rout a finger recess on the outside of our two cheek pieces.

And to do that, I've installed a core box bit here in the router table and raised it 3/16 of an inch.

And then I've marked on the fence the leading edge and trailing edge of where the bit is going to cut.

On my workpieces, I've marked the start and stop marks, as well.

So, what I'll do is turn on the router, I'll line up the front layout mark with the fence, lower the workpiece over, slide it along until the trailing edge matches the mark on the fence, and then I can lift it off.

Alright, we're ready to do a little bit of assembly here and attach the wood cheeks to the square.

The first thing I did, though, is stepped over to the miter saw and cut a miter on one end of both of the cheeks.

Just kind of a traditional detail that you'll see on a lot of squares.

I'm going to attach them one at a time, and I'm going to use some instant glue, and then we'll reinforce that with some pins in just a bit.

So, I'm going to spread some glue on the long cheek first.

Then I'm going to use activator and spray that onto the square.

Then when I bring the two together, the activator will make the glue set up even faster.

Alright.

There we go.

Now we're going to head over to the drill press and drill out some holes to make this attachment more permanent with some pins.

Eventually going to add pins to all of the holes that I drilled, but for right now, I want to concentrate on these upper four holes because the backside of it is going to be that pocket where the bevel gauge is going to go, and I'm not going to have access to that later.

So, all I need to do is take a short piece of steel rod and fit that into the holes that I drilled.

Well.

Tap it down in place.

Then, with a few smart blows from the hammer, it'll mushroom out both the top and the underside a little bit, locking the cheek to the framing square.

Once it's all done, I can file the inside surface smooth, and then I'll be able to attach the opposite side.

There isn't what you call a lot of standard woodworking joinery on this particular project, but there are a lot of holes to drill, and one of those is to create a little thumb notch on the inside cheek of our square.

That allows you to get that bevel gauge out that we're going to start shaping a little bit later on.

Alright, now we're ready to do a little bit of the drilling and some of the metal parts.

There's one final hole to drill here and it's back in wood.

It's that long cheek that I've already attached to the framing square.

This hole is going to accept a threaded insert.

That's the pivot point for both the bevel gauge and that sliding tab.

Alright, we're here to wrap things up on the framing square upgrade, so to speak.

A little time with some sandpaper here, and we're ready to get things assembled.

So, I can set the tab in place and position the blade in its pocket.

Then I have a washer and a knob here.

So, there we go.

I added a little hole on the end of the blade just to be able to get it out of its pocket.

So, now I can adjust and set any kind of bevel angle that I want.

I can extend the tab, and the square sits comfortably and securely on the edge of a workpiece.

And with those two added cheeks, the square stands up on its own.

So, I've taken a tool and upgraded it for the kind of work that I like to do.

I hope you find something that you can use in your shop to upgrade some of your tools, as well.

And one material that's really a lot of fun to work with in the shop is brass.

You can make compasses, you can make planes, you can make all sorts of things, and you can make a hammer.

And that's what I'm going to do today.

We're going to make a small brass hammer.

Now, there are really two kinds of hammers in this world.

The kind you swing with a bit of wrist and elbow action, like this ball peen hammer, and the kind you more or less drop, that you're using a lot of shoulder action.

And that's the kind we're going to make today.

This is a shoulder-action hammer.

Now, where would we use that?

Well, the advantage to a hammer that's a little bit heavy and that you use more shoulder on is that it tends to be a lot more accurate as it strikes.

And so this is going to be a great hammer for doing things like dovetail work or any time you need accuracy.

So, a heavy head, a short handle makes it a great shop tool.

So, where do we begin?

The first step is going to be to drill out for the eye of our hammer in which the handle can be inserted.

To do that, I've got a big drill bit here -- this is a 5/8 -- and I'm going to drill two overlapping holes.

The total width of my eye will be 1 inch.

And so, I've got two layout points marked here for each of the holes that I need to drill.

Well, with the eye of our hammer all finished and opened up at the top, the next step is to work on the faces of our hammer.

And that's the business end.

So, what I don't want is for it to be perfectly flat.

I'd like it to be just a little bit domed.

It'll make the hammer feel a little bit better in use.

So, to do that, what I have done is I took a magic marker and I just blackened each end of the hammer head.

And with that done, I'm just going to take a file, and I want to create a slight bevel from the edge to the halfway point.

And I'll do that on all four faces and then smooth things out to a nice, even dome.

You know, we haven't talked much about files.

I've used a couple files so far.

To open up the eye, I use a square file and a rat tail.

This is a half round, which is a good shape of a file.

It's very versatile.

And this is a coarse cut.

Now that I have the coarse cutting done, I'm going to go back with a fine cutting file and smooth things out just a little bit.

With the eye and the faces of our hammer done, well, we could stop there.

We could just round things over a little bit, put a handle on it, call it good.

But that wouldn't be very much fun.

A handmade tool needs to shine, so I'm going to add some decoration to our hammer head.

If you look closely here, you can see I've got a little bit of a line that follows the eye of our hammer, and that material, I'm going to remove, and it's going to help to create two separate heads.

In addition to that, we're also going to be adding a bit of design work with a cold chisel.

So, I'm here at the band saw, and the reason I am is you'll find that when working with alloy 360 brass, the band saw cuts it beautifully.

So, I'm going to save myself a little time, and I'm going to make incising cuts at the beginning of each of these areas and then cut a slight wafer of brass off.

And that's going to help speed things up, and it's a little less filing for me.

Well, as you can see, I finished rounding out the cheeks around the eye of our hammer, and that kind of defines the two ends.

Next up, I struck a line in the center of each of these side faces of our hammer and filed a notch top and bottom.

And that's just part of the decoration.

Here, you can see I've laid out two squares, one inside the other.

Those squares, we're going to incise with cold chisels.

So, I went ahead and clamped a piece of steel to my bench, kind of to act as an anvil.

You don't have to do that, but it helps to have some mass behind the hammer head.

I'm going to start with the outside.

So, I have a cold chisel that is just the right length, and I want to carefully lay it on that line.

And there we go.

So, what we're doing is we're not really cutting the brass as much as just pushing it aside, but it does form a nice line, and it's an easy way to decorate any sort of brass tool you're making.

So, I just need to continue all the way around and then I'm going to switch to a smaller cold chisel to get the inside square.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, the brass head is all finished up.

So, what I did was I went in and refined a lot of the cuts I'd made with files and smoothed them out as best I could.

After that, of course, we did the work with the cold chisels to get these square patterns on the sides.

The final finishing was done with two products -- one, plain old 220 sandpaper.

360 brass sands beautifully.

And so it's very much like working a very hard piece of wood.

The final touch was to use a Scotch-Brite pad.

These pads come in a variety of different colors, depending on the coarseness.

This is a green, which is a fairly coarse product, and it really works great to even things out and give it a nice luster.

So, with the brass done, it's time to turn our attention to the handle.

So, as I mentioned earlier, this is a hammer with a short handle that's more for shoulder work, for short, accurate strikes.

So, this is 7 inches long.

I've gone ahead and made it to the correct thickness and width.

Our first step is going to be to go to the table saw, and I'm going to cut a tenon on this end to help form the tenon which will fit into the hammer head.

Once that's done, I'm going to draw the outline of the handle, head to the band saw and cut that out, and then it's back to the bench, and we'll start working with our rasp, shaping and making our handle comfortable.

Well, here's my finished handle.

I've got it nicely rounded.

It feels pretty good in my hand.

I also took a fine-tooth saw and made a slit up here in the tenon -- that's to accommodate the wedge.

So, next step, we'll insert the handle.

And for a wedge, you can make whatever you like.

This is just a simple hardware store hammer wedge.

Works great.

Insert that in the curve and make sure that it is centered.

Well, there we go.

There's our finished hammer.

Now, think of all the different designs you could make for the head and for the handle.

If you'd like to make this hammer, check out the plans on our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

You know, a marking gauge is a great tool to have in the shop.

One like this guy allows you to make repeatable marks across a variety of parts.

Once you set it, you can come back to that same measurement every time, as long as you don't adjust it.

However, when it comes to sheet goods, these guys just sized a little bit too small.

These are really good for hardwood parts.

But we can make a larger version called a panel gauge.

What a panel gauge is is basically one of these guys, but it's sized to mark out full sheet goods.

Now, last season I made this awl.

It's ebony, pewter, and steel, and I really like this color combination.

So, today, I'm going to make a panel gauge using this same combo.

So, the beam on our panel gauge is going to set in the fence at an angle.

That's compared to this guy that sits flat.

So, when you look at it from the end, it's going to kind of look like a diamond shape.

And to lock it down, we're going to have a knob up top, and that's going to press on a steel shoe.

Now, we don't want that steel shoe pressing on this corner.

Even though this is ebony and it's hard, it will crush that corner.

So, we're going to plane a facet along this top edge.

That facet is going to be the same width as that steel shoe is going to be, which is going to be a 1/4 inch.

So, what I've done is I've already marked a reference line on both ends, and I'm going to just take a plane and plane down to that reference line.

And then I'm going to sit this guy in the bench here, and I'm going to use some form of 45-degree reference just to make sure that this beam is sitting nice and accurately, and I'll pinch it in between these dogs.

And because I've referenced these faces at 45 degrees, now it's a simple matter of just planing straight, keeping the solo plane parallel to the bench top.

Okay, there we go.

So, now you can see that I knocked that top corner off.

That'll give us a good flat bearing surface for that shoe to ride on.

So, now the only thing left to do with this beam is to make some way to attach a pencil and a marking knife.

Now, the pencil is pretty straightforward.

I'm simply going to go over to the drill press and drill a through hole based on this top flat we just made.

And then, I'll go ahead and knock off one of these corners for a wood screw, and I'll curve it.

That way I can insert a pencil, Install the wood screw, and that will pinch that curved back closed, holding the pencil securely.

There we go.

So, that notch is perfect.

That's going to help me hold the pencil in place.

Now we're going to turn it around to the other end of this beam.

This end is going to hold a knife, like I mentioned earlier.

To hold that knife blade in place, I'm going to take this piece of flat, mild steel.

I'm going to recess it into the end, and I'm going to drill and tap it for a machine screw.

To create the notch here, I'm going to cut the curves with a hand saw, and then just chisel away the waste.

However, marking on the end grain of ebony with a pencil is extremely hard to see.

So what I've done is I've covered the end with blue painter's tape and then after positioning that flat bar stock in place, you can hold it and score the edges with a utility knife.

And then, simple matter of removing that center area.

And that's going to be my waste.

So, now we can go and cut some curves and chisel away the waste.

Creating the fence for our panel gauge starts here at the drill press.

I've taken that blank that we glued up earlier, and I've cut it down to final size.

The first thing we're going to do is we're going to drill a hole on this front face.

This is going to be a 3/8 inch hole for steel rod.

The steel rod will get cut to length and inserted in that hole, and that's going to act as if it is a nut for this thumbscrew.

That thumbscrew is then going to tighten down our beam when everything's all done and put together.

So, we're going to start by drilling this hole and installing that steel rod, and then we're going to flip this fence up on edge, and then we're going to drill from the top side.

That bit is going to be sized for a 1/4" 20 tap.

So, the final thing I had to do at the drill press was drill this center hole.

And as you can see from my outline here, that center hole is going to be for the beam later.

That Forstner bit hole really just removes a lot of the waste, so then I just have a little bit of hand chiseling to kind of square everything up and get this beam to fit in its home.

So, now, here at the bench, we can go ahead and flip over from woodworking mode kind of into metalworking mode.

The first thing we're going to do is take this nut that we pulled out of the fence.

Now, you can see that hole we drilled when that was stuck inside the fence at the drill press is pretty well centered.

So, now what we need to do is we need to tap this to turn this rod with a hole into a nut.

So, to do that, we're going to place this in the vise.

And we're going to use a tap.

Now, this tap is sized to be the same thread count as the nuts that I'm going to use.

So, with the right sized drill bit and a tap, you can pretty much turn anything into a nut.

So, if we take this guy and stick it onto our fence, we can kind of see how all these pieces are starting to come together.

So, that rod's going to act like a nut for this thumbscrew.

That thumbscrew will push on a shoe that we'll inlet in a little bit, and that will pinch that beam in place.

And it'll hold everything nice and tight.

Now, if you look at the plans for this panel gauge, this has a pretty deep rabbet, and it uses brass on the top and inside edge of it.

I think I'm going to go ahead and cut that rabbet, but I think I'm just going to put steel on the inside face.

We'll let the ebony itself act as that top wear strip.

It's pretty hard wood, anyways.

So, after I installed this steel wear strip, I went and drove those pins and peened them over.

I think they look pretty nice.

Now it's time to put everything together.

This shoe fits into place up there in that notch, and then the thumbscrew can be installed with that nut we made with the steel rod.

Flipping our attention over to the beam, I've already installed the pencil.

That simply goes in that hole.

And then I drilled a hole for a screw.

And by tightening down that screw, it pinches -- pinches that pencil in place, and it's not going to move.

Back here on the knife end, I went ahead and installed that little backer plate that I talked about earlier.

Simply cut that to size, epoxied it in place with a pre-drilled and tapped hole for a 1/4" 20 screw.

Now we can slip everything together.

So, that guy goes through there.

Can tighten down that thumbscrew, and that locks that fence in place.

And now we need to install our knife.

Now that marking gauge is pretty much done.

Now, I might do a little fine tuning and maybe add a couple details, but right now, I'm pretty happy with that.

Whether you make or modify your tools, you're sure to end up with something that's going to really help out on the types of projects that you build and the way that you work.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we built three unique woodworking tools.

We did a layout square, a panel gauge, and a brass hammer.

All can be used on just about any project that you build.

If you want to build your own, you can check out the plans.

They're at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There, you'll also find more project plan ideas, videos to help you improve your woodworking, and more.

And then we can join up right back here and build another great project in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of The Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Man: Old Masters, offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

Announcer: And by... Man: Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Announcer: Additional funding provided by... Man: Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

Announcer: And by... ♪♪ ♪♪