Pinch sticks (Lee Valley Bar Gauge Heads)

Saw a few folks making pinch sticks on here, and Lee Valley just started selling their Bar Gauge Heads plus I’m making a screen for our fireplace, and needed to measure the width of the inside of it, so everything kind of came together to say, “Now’s the time!”

Ripped a piece of ¾” pine off the edge of a board which is destined to be a French cleat on the wall. Took about ⅜ or so, then planered it down to a quarter inch, and cut two pieces about 16” long off.

Opened the package from Lee Valley, and all of their little screws and studs and stuff scattered in he sawdust on the floor. Dammit. Sent Lee Valley an email grumbling about the packaging, including the pile of sweepings I dug through and found a few of the pieces in. I was lucky I had cleaned up the shop just a couple days ago, so it wasn’t a 5-gallon bucket worth of sweepings I had to dig through.

If you’re looking for replacement screws, #6x⅜ wood screws are just a hair too long, but filing off the sharp ends that poke through is pretty easy if you use brass screws. And then I grabbed a couple pieces of 3/16 x 3/8 inch brass rectangular tubing, cut them to ¾ inch long, filed off one side, and carved two ends of the pine to accept them. Glued them on with fish glue and then cleaned things up with the file, and ta-da!

I’ll remake these with some pretty hardwood at some point. Or I won’t, since they work just fine as-is, and took about 35 minutes to make from pine.