Was wondering what is the easiest way to mark the center line of the blank. My wife has tried the thread running down the centerline but it seemed to walk on her when she laid down the threads. I have been doing it with a scratch all the way down a dowel rod but, obviously would not want to do that on an actual blank. Any help would be much appreciated.

Michael Friske

If you have a light over your wrapper, it should show a perfectly straight refection running the length of the rod. You can mark your crossover points with a LIGHT scratch mark on the blank finish (not deep enough to get into the blank itself). The light scratches will be completely eliminated when finish is applied. Fine line China markers, etc can also be used. I'm sure you will get other ideas/opinions.

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

I sometimes use a white china marker.

I have used a white out pen and that works pretty well, but lately on any rod that I am doing closed wraps on I very lightly scratch my line and a centers on the blank. And as noted above don't scratch too deeply, just enough to slightly mar the surface.

I get a little nervous scratching blanks so I've always used a china marker. Recently I've found that if you push to hard on the china marker you can get excess white stuff on the blank that sometimes works it's way up through the thread. So I found a sharpie marker in metallic silver that works better and creates much more accurate marks than the china marker. And I use this to draw the dots (I do not draw lines just dots at every cross point)
[shop.mudhole.com]





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2006 08:26AM by Scott Youschak.

Thats great thank you all for your input. I think that I will go and try to find one of those silver sharpies. Thanx again for all of your help.

Michael Friske

One other thing that I learned from Michael's Crouse's presentation in Charlotte this year. If you have a gray matte blank (probably other colors, too, so long as they are matte) a regular pencil works. This is much easier and less messy that a china marker, and the pencil dot is easy to see when the light hits it a certain way.
Steve Broadwell

Michael,
If you make a mistake using a sharpie it can be removed with most pencil erasers
or a rubber tool handle. Sharpie is not as permanent as most people are led to believe!

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

also, if you are doing a chevron make sure your layout threads are laid at the OPPOSITE end of the dot as the direction you are working. If you work from the center of the dots you'll see your marks at the bottom of each of your cross wraps.