The July-August issue of Woodworker West has an article by Kevin
Glen-Drake, titled "An Alternative Approach for Handtool Joinery" that
makes an interesting point AND involves two tools that are particularly
interesting.

The point of the article is "If you're learning to handcut joints - a)
start with a simple, single, "finger"/"box joint" - and here's the
interesting part- b) use THICK stock. "You can't correct your mistakes
unless you can see them, and bigger mistakes are easier to see."- makes
a lot of sense.

Of course, being the guy the Glen-Drake Tite-Mark (tm) is named after
because he invented it, he lays out the joint using one. the Tite-Mark,
having a single bevel cutting/scribing wheel, leaves a nice square face
on one side of the scribe - just what you need to register the edge of a
chisel against, or to stop a shallow chisel cut. And since the whole
idea of the exercise is to SEE what you've got - he chalks the scribed
line to make it stand out. Good practice - but that's not what got me
wondering.

The illustration of him sawing the joint is what has me baffled. He
appaers to be using a two handles "back saw" - the "back" wishboning
behind the blade into two parallel handles - and he's holding both of
them when sawing. I've seen handsaws with an offset handle, and one
that lets you flip it so it sticks out either on the right or left side
of the blade. Never could understand why you'd need that with a back
saw, since the "back" prevents you from sawing right up against a
vertical face. But why a two parallel handles back saw - a mystery to
me. Anyone have an explanation or see a benefit to two parallel
handles?

The other interesting tool metioned is the "Kerf-Starter (tm) (all one
line so watch the line wrap)
http://play-glen-drake.com/v-web/eco...a5df3ed05df74c
Though it looks soemthing like a carving tool it actually works like a
scraper - with the thickness of your saw's kerf. The resulting "scraped
line" helps register your saw to the part - making the critical
beginning of the cut a bit more controlled, and therefore easier.

Anyone have any personal experience with a Kerf-Starter?

charlie b