Laney and anyone else that may be interested,
I just wanted to let you know that I built one of the depth gauges years ago from plans that were on like Wood Magazine and it works great. I never liked a few of the things that mine had like ugly thick (1/4”) plastic that was too thick so I decided to watch your video and make a better one. (In fact I decided to build 4 new ones and give them to my friends.)
A few things I changed/added was I put a quarter round bit in my router/table and routed the top and base pieces on the fronts and sides (Not the bottoms or upright sides). Looks much better.
I also put 2 wood screws in the uprights and bases after I glued them. Very strong.
On the upright and top I air nailed after I glued them together.
Another was that I used a 1” dowel and it too worked great. (I only made mine 8” long but that is plenty)
I noticed that you put your dowel in your vice to plane it. I used a jig I had already made up that has a ½” wide groove running down the center and is about 15” long. I laid my 8” dowels in/on the ½” groove cradle and put a thinner stop block at the far end of the dowel. Then I took my electric hand plane and planed off the flat sides. Surprisingly the dowels stayed down good in the groove. Those came out very good but I also reversed the jig and ran my belt sander on them too.
After I snapped my 1” x 1/8" wide Plexiglas I drilled and counter sunk the small holes before I bent them to shape. Much easier to use the pre-drilled holes when drilling on into the dowels.
On my old gauge I had cut off a ruler and drilled two screw holes to mount it. Worked great but didn’t look very nice because of the screws I used. I like your idea of using double sided tape to at least start holding the measuring device. Then I can always put a couple little (nice) screws in later when I’m sure everything zeros out, if I want.
I plan on either staining and/or Polyurethaning the wood before I mount the measuring and plastic devices.
It has been fun building more of them and better as I enjoy making jigs of all kinds and mine has always been very useful. I have decided to add a picture of it/them.
Thank you for sharing your video with us and I hope this may help you with projects in the future.
Sorry about being so long winded.