I’m happy to announce a new product in the lineup. It’s designed to help Granite Surface Plate users protect, and get better outcomes from their surface plates.

It’s the Granite Surface Plate Cover Kit.

The kits consists of a soft charcoal grey fleece cover that is form fitted to fit the plate, to protect the flattened surface of a 9 x 12 x 2 plate, or a 12 x 18 x 3 plate, and each comes with a set of three feet to mount on the bottom of the plate that aid a number of things.

Why a Cover?

Surface plates are truly precision tools. They are a reference standard for flatness that can help us verify the straightness and squareness of both our tooling and projects. We can sand things flat using their surfaces, and they are the best possible substrate we can ask for the “Scary Sharp” Methods of sharpening. This is a valuable surface to protect from harm.

Granite is a really hard material, but it is not as hard as many of the tools and projects we have and use in our shops. The surface of a granite surface plate is flat to at least 1/10,000ths of an inch or better, depending if we bought grade B or higher. This means that nearly any particle that lands on it can be large enough to affect some accuracy if the plate is not protected from dust, grit and grunge. This is even more critical if the surface quality is higher. If the working surface of the plate is kept covered, it is often kept clean enough to use spontaneously, and that may mean we are inclined to use it more.

It is also important to remember that a surface that has such high level flatness and accuracy can be adversely affected by something as inadvertent as a scratch. Once you put a scratch in the surface of a Surface Plate, you can’t even buff it out without running further risks to the plate’s accuracy.

These plates are worth what we pay for them, even at full price, and even more valuable if you got it on sale with free shipping, because the costs to ship these are often more than full price for the tool. Any damage that happens to these tools once we have them can quickly diminish the good deal they may have been when we bought them. It seems to pay us to protect them well.

This cover is designed to fit the plate, protect it from harm. It is soft and looks nice. It helps keep your surface plate in the clean and ready to use condition you left it. It protects the investment you made in the plate in the first place, for it’s future.

Why a Foot Kit?

Again, Granite is really hard, and the bottom surface, while not as flattened to the degree as the top, it is a parallel surface and can be harder that the surfaces we use it on. These rocks are also really heavy, and the act of both moving it and using it can render your prized bench, or any other surface you place it on with scratches, dents or marred surfaces from the act of sharpening. Who wants to damage the area they use their surface plate?

The act of sharpening on a surface plate is a repetitive motion that can cause the plate to rock or wobble if the surface the plate is placed on isn’t flat too, and that can help mar up a surface. Sometimes those forces can cause the plate to skid and slide as well.

The difficulty of getting your fingers under the plate to move it is another issue users face with surface plates. It is difficult to get one’s fingers under the plate. Often the plate is dragged near an edge so a hold can be gotten and the plate lifted. This is yet another way we can scratch things up that we don’t want scratched up.

Lifting and moving the plate can be made worse if liquids are used to sharpen as well. The liquids often seep over the edge of the plate, and are drawn under the plate by capillary action, and when you go to lift the plate, there is now a suction under the plate due to the flatness, and the plate is slick from the liquids. It is a recipe for difficult maneuvering that can result is scratches or worse, a dropped plate.

The solution to a lot of these issues is the Foot Kit. The Foot Kit is three self stick rubber feet that are to be adhered to the bottom of the granite surface plate. The feet are non-skid, and meant to be installed in a tripod configuration, that is recommended by Federal Specification GGG-P-463c. This tripod configuration eliminates rocking, the feet do not scratch, reduce skidding, ends suction locks to the bench or tables, and provides a space that makes it easy to get one’s fingers under the plate for a secure hand hold when moving it.

The placement for the feet in the spec shows where to place the feet to properly support the weight distribution of the plate. You don’t need to worry about the details of it though, because I have done the math for you, all you need to do is follow the layout instructions I provided in the owner’s manual for the cover kit, place the feet according to these measurements and Bob’s your Uncle.

These cover kits are made right here in house on a Vintage Singer 201-2 Sewing Machine with Queen Anne Cabinet. This one was built in 1941, right at the beginning of World War II. The 201-2 is still considered one of the nicest sewing machines ever made, particularly for stitching a straight line. This one purrs like a kitten, as long as I keep it in a steady diet of sewing machine oil.

For “Old Machine” lovers, these old sewing machines share a lot in common with old woodworking machines. They were built accurately and built to last. The finish on these old machines is japanning, and gold leaf decals. These are 100% gear drive machines and are very robust. They will happily sew garment grade leathers. They have a motor housing built onto the back.

The cabinet is a beautiful piece of furniture, made of walnut and walnut burl. It took a little restoration to get it back to its former glory, but she is a real looker and made in a fashion many a woodworker aspires to build to. It turns out; Singer was a big maker of furniture for their machines back then. They don’t make them like this anymore, and here it is some 70 years later, really in as fine shape as ever, and making these covers for you.

One other thing comes along with this fine sewing machine. That is, a very good friend to me who is a pro at using it.

If you are interested in getting one of these cover kits, they are available for the 9 x 12 x 2 plates for $30.00, and the 12 x 18 x 3 plates for $40.00. These prices include the cover, the foot kit, instructions for care and use, and shipping to anywhere in the CONUS. Everything your need to upgrade the surface plate you have, delivered to your door.

For purchase, feel free to look for them in the Evenfall Studios Store, or in the links directly to them provided above. As always, shooting board production continues. Look for some cool stuff to work with them coming in the future!

The big thing about using steel cross dowels for knock down construction is that your layout must be absolutely meticulous. I have, and continue to use these a lot in jig construction, but there are a lot of other great applications.

While a lot can be done with these, a common application is for use in workbench base construction. Real life happens. People move, circumstances change. Sometimes the dream shop in the basement relocates to a garage or an outbuilding. Many of us cannot build a bench with the certainty of knowing it will never need to be easily transported to elsewhere at some future point. This makes the use of steel or brass cross dowels a wonderful option.

While this article is about what it takes to install cross dowels, due to popular demand I have researched and included links to what I feel are the best sources for this hardware in it’s various sizes out there. The links are included at the end of this article.

It is notable that bench building is enjoying a renaissance right now. some great new designs, vises and hardware packages have recently become available.

Amongst these offerings, a top of the line All Steel Cross Dowel Package has been made available by Benchcrafted. They are marketed as Benchcrafted Barrel Nuts, and they are the best product available to the bench builder. Unlike any other cross dowel meant for use with benches, these are all steel for heavy duty applications and the design allows the installer to align them with fingers during assembly. These are top quality, a great value and installation doesn’t get simpler.

Ok, if you already have your hardware in hand, then layout for cross dowels in knock down bench legs works like this. If you have not obtained the parts you need, please consider waiting until you have it in hand.

Lay your two legs and cross piece on the bench, Inside face facing up, already milled, mortised and tenoned, and dry fit them. Clamp them top and bottom to hold the unit together with enough force so that things will not move while you perform the layout, and check them for square. Make sure you have them square.

If you have a Veritas saddle square, or equivalent, that would be handy, but if you don’t, no matter, here is a work around:

Position the leg assembly by allowing it to hang over the edge of your bench and support it with a something like a telescopic roller stand. Take a six-foot length of string line and tie a nut or a heavy washer on each end for weight, and drape it over the leg assembly, along the centerline of the crosspiece. This string line forms somewhat of a double-ended plumb bob, which will indicate the centerline of your layout work and will project these lines around corners. You can eyeball centerline of your work piece or measure. Once the string is located, go ahead and put a piece of blue painters tape on each end near the corners where it drapes over the edge.

The best position for the cross dowel on the bolt is at the end of the bolt with all the threads in the nut fully engaged. The formula for figuring cross dowel hole location from any combination of length and diameter hardware is to take the working length of the bolt (which differs if the cap screw is hex head, allen head, button head or flat head) and subtract half the diameter of the cross dowel from that length to find hole centerline for the cross dowel. The length of the bolt, when you are choosing the length optionally, is best determined by the thickness of what it has to pass through on the bolt head side, plus 1-1/4 inches minimum into the adjoining board for cross dowel centerline.