Marking Steel by Hock Tools

178mm Long, 6 mm Wide (max), 1.6mm Thick, Weight 14 grams, Single-sided spear point blade.

To overcome the issue with achieving marking of fine pins in dovetail joints and other very delicate marking or cutting situations

Advantages are

• at 1.6mm thick it can get pretty much anywhere in narrow spacing.
• it is very light
• easily held in "pencil grip"
• the bevels are not thick so they can easily be resharpened
• it is thick enough so it will not flex, and then stray from the line wishing to be marked.
• the spear point allows marking on both sides of narrow pins.
• does not need to be tilted, (and herein is the rub as they say). A single side beveled blade needs to be held upright against the sides of the dovetails to mark these fine pins,  ( which are acting as a template) and therefore need to be at right angles to the end grain surface of the pins to be marked and the side of the dovetails need to be flat over their thickness. If they are not the blade tip will not track at the extreme corner where dovetail and pin surfaces meet. Machine-cut dovetails ensure this is not a problem, but hand-cut dovetails will need some caressing.
• it is not expensive, so if it is not used all the time it does not rob value funds from other purchases.

Tip: if you wish to make your own marking/cutting gauge a shortened marking steel will serve well. The following gauge was featured in Fine Woodworking #261 May/June 2017