Marking darker wood

[Richard D.]

Silver welder's pencil.

[Arlin Eastman]

I use a knife but to highlight it I either use a white pencil or white sharpie marker.

Arlin

[Brian Miller]

Silver pencil, white pencil, yellow pencil.

[Sullivan]

Sounds strange but I've used a RED ultra-fine sharpie with good results.

[Sawdustd]

Here's what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Bohin-91473-Extra-...B004M5BGD4 Works great.

[Herb G]

LIL. There are some really good tips here. (No pun intended.)

[badwhiskey]

Yep, silver pencil here as well.

[Rick LoDico]

These show up very well on walnut.

http://www.amazon.com/Charcoal-White-Pen...e+chalk+pencils

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

Knife and chalk is good way to mark dark woods for most purposes. But sometimes you don’t want to end up with a knife-line.

I often round-over the edges of small pieces of dark wood with a block plane. I usually plane to the 16-agon stage, 3 new facets per edge, after which I scrape or sand smooth. I mark both edges of the 45-degree facets and the far edges of both 22.5-degree facets and simply plane to the lines. Knifing and chalk would leave me with cuts to remove. I’ve found it’s easy to get the knife-line too deep.

For a while I marked with a Stabilo white pencil, but found that some oily tropicals would dissolve the lines while I was working on them. Even if the lines didn’t disappear into the wood, I found the soft white pencil gave lines of variable, irregular width - not the best planing target.

I’ve found that I can mark with graphite pencil lead and make it visible enough by adjusting the incident light. I use a 0.5-mm mechanical pencil with a soft (Pentel 2B) lead and get consistent lines that are easy to see if the light hits them at the proper angle. Sometimes even the ambient light from the ceiling fluorescents gives enough contrast, but if not, I grab the incandescent lamp from the drill press, mount it near the vise and shoot it at low angle at the piece I’m planing.

This might be awkward for larger, furniture-sized pieces, but for small pieces where I want to avoid a knife-line, this is the best way I’ve found. The photo shows a few dark wood samples marked with plain pencil lead and only ambient fluorescent illumination.