Trash to Treasure - Marking Gauge - 058

Alright, I'm going to turn some trash into something useful. This is an old can opener. I'm trying to get this circular blade off of here. I've already been picking at it with a screwdriver and that's all stripped inside there. I don't know, we'll figure it out. This is a piece of that headboard from the Trash to Treasure video. Just a piece of maple. And another piece of that same maple from that video. I've got a box of miscellaneous junk. And I'm going to try and see if I can't get a marking gauge out of this. So here's what I've come up with so far. I'm going to leave about 2 inches and about 2 inches just to give it a little bit more beef. A beefier design, you know, a little bit stronger look I guess. I'm all winging this by the way, I've never had a marking gauge so here goes nothing. This wing nut is from the Trash to Treasure love seat. Remember there's 4 wing nuts, not wing nuts, T-nut. There's 4 of these on the bottom of the sofa where the legs screwed into. So I've got 4 of these, I'm going to use 1. And what I'm going to do is it's going to be inside it something like so. I'm actually going to hog this out with a Forstner bit. And then chisel the rest up nice and neat. This is a 1 inch by 1 inch square. Like I said, I have no clue what the hell I'm doing here so just goofing off really. And I'm going to come in through the top and drill this particular size all the way through. And I'm going to pull this T-nut into the hole. I may have to, actually I may have to go a little bit bigger because of the diameter of the T-nut inside there. That shouldn't be any problem. And once this is in place, I'm going to epoxy this nut onto the thread so it won't spin. Yeah, something like that. And let's see, I'm going to use this. I'm going to trim it down to, it's already 1 inch by something. But this is already 1 inch so I'm going to trim this down to 5 eighths. And I figured that would leave a little bit of overhang top and bottom on this. It won't leave any overhang on the sides. But try and get dead center. Screw that in place. And that way it will be in like so. With, once it's down to 5 eighths it will be something like that. With the thickness of, keep going. With this thickness like so. To tighten this down, this is a toilet bolt. So I can just spin the top of it. That should be plenty. You don't have to wrench down on this too much. And the epoxy nut on the bottom will give it more surface area to hold onto. Yeah, let's see if this works. No clue here. Well after about 15 minutes of cussing myself for wanting to do this with a chisel. I got it done. This fits in like so. And will slide all the way through. It's a little snug right now. But I think, I think I'm just going to lightly sand these two sides to get it to slide a little bit better. Once that's complete, I will drill my holes and chop this off. Alright, the drill, the hole is drilled. And in order for me to get that T-nut to sink into this maple. Like I said, I'm still winging this so it's probably going to split. I don't know. I don't care. I'm just playing around here. But anyway, this is the piece that was on the side of it. And I cut it off. And this is my test hole to see if that T-nut would work. So what I'm going to do. I'm actually going to use that as a washer. And put this other bolt through here and tighten it down. And as I tighten it down, it should draw this T-nut in. Maybe. I guess. Hopefully. So I got that T-nut to sink back in there. This, I ended up pushing it all the way through. Pulling it all the way through without any washers and without using any wrenches. Just by turning those blocks, it started to dig in. And then, just for safe measure, I put it back in with some washers. And used a little wrench to finish pulling it in. But, no splits. Where the T-nut is, by the way. That's all my chip out from my caveman mortising. That's that. And this goes in like so. Like so. That will slide in. Still have to do some fine-tuning. And then this. Like so. I've been playing around with it. I think if I put it in this way first, it's a little bit smoother by hand. But I can operate it by hand. Still need to adjust. But this, as is, just tightens it down alright and I can't move it. Obviously, the more I use this, the more I'm going to mark up this face. But, I guess I can go ahead and mount that little wheel down here. And use it as is. And once this face becomes marked up, then I can rip it to my original 5-8ths like I wanted to. And that will allow me enough room to put a nut on the end of this toilet bolt once it gets in. Alright, so the moment of truth. It slides alright by hand. And I took that little disc cutter and mounted it on the end. Don't have much of an overhang here. And be sure, if you're going to do this, mount it in such a way that there's a bevel on this thing. And the bevel is facing this way. That way it wants to pull the guide into the material as you're making the cut. If not, then it's going to want to creep away. That's not what you want. But anyway, let me adjust this like so. I'm sure that's the measurement we want. And tighten this down by hand. It's not moving. And let's see what we get. It did the trick. Let's just see this one more time, I guess. I'll put one right next to it. Loosen it up. Tighten it down. And just one more. Neato. So this little dude works pretty good. I'm quite surprised. I'm really shocked. I was just goofing off here for a couple minutes and figured I'd record it. That's part of a can opener. This is a toilet bolt out of a commode, toilet, whatever you call it. Whatever part of the world you're around. Like I said, the more I tighten this down, the more it's going to wear away at the surface. Who cares? I'll just mill it back down a little bit and put a spacer in there. As a matter of fact, you can see what it's done just then. But like I said, who cares? This was junk sitting around. Literally trash, this can opener. Literally, that was trash. So, trash to treasure. Can opener from, I don't know where I got it, it's been in this apartment for a while. Toilet bolt from my junk drawer. And this is part of that headboard. So, pretty nifty. Once more for good measure. Let's go, let's make this three. That works really well. I'm shocked. I really thought I'd have to chuck this into the drill press with a file and sharpen it up a little bit. But those are three pretty good lines right there. So, trash to treasure success. Zero dollars invested. Just be creative. Thanks for watching.