JessEm Wood Sabre Marking Gauge

[Woodenfish]

I have been wanting one of those JessEm Wood Sabre Marking Guages for years and finally purchased one off Amazon. It just arrived yesterday and I’ve spent some time playing around with it. Number one it’s a gorgeous well made bench tool. It’s heavy, it can be set stupid accurate easily, repeat settings no problem and it’s heavy. It fit’s comfortably well in my hand, in fact really good and it’s overall weight adds to the function as does its flat surfaces which won’t roll off the bench top like my wheel gauge. It also came with a very nicely made metal wall mount to store it safely and securely. 

It’s a work of art as well as a tool and consists of 20 individual parts, plenty of stainless steel and highly machined pieces a company like JessEm is noted for making its cost of $109 fully justified. Certainly designed to cross the accuracy of a machinists micrometer measuring tool with a woodworkers lay-out tool with great success and be very unique in its category. 

Compared to a Rob Cosman custom marking gauge it would be a tough pick but I would take this upon price alone. Highly recommended hand tool that you will be both proud to own and to use. With it’s high quality micrometer adjustability it could be your only marking gauge unless you need one with a metric scale which is also available from JessEm.

[Handplanesandmore]

Glad you like it.

I don't like its modern look or its 3/4" below-cutter registration surface. Mine are just shy of 1". I didn't compare the weight, but I have both light and heavy gauges, and they don't seem to make any difference to me in use or in the results.

Simon

[Woodenfish]

I have one WoodRiver wheel marking gauge and needed a second. This was purely a luxury purchase that will get a fair amount of use. In my limited use so far I really like its heft in comparison for feel and use but right now I’m in the infatuation stage.

[AHill]

Same cost as the Tite-Mark, which gets consistently high ratings. I don't think the ability to get exact measurements is as useful as one may think. When marking mortises, I set the gauge to the thickness of the chisel, and not some exact measurement. Same approach for rabbets or dados / grooves, where I set the gauge to the thickness of whatever is going to mate to the rabbet / groove / dado.