> OK I give, in case your wondering what I've been doing with SWIFTWOOD I'm
> kinda stuck.

> How do you cut the cotton picking scarfs on the shear clamps?

> This is what I've tried so far. I've manually holding the saw and wood -
> forget it unless you Norm Abram! I've tried to fit it into my adjustable
> miter box. Which BTW only goes out to 45 degrees. A proper 6to1 scarf is
> about 9 degrees. So I clamped it down. Only to find that the wood was
> hitting the fittings on the miter box. So I spaced it up with a cutoff
> 2x4. I clamped the wood down and cut it only to find out that the wood is
> not perfectly square. So I need a piece of angle iron to clamp, instead
> the side too.

first, what are the dimensions of the stock you are trying to scarph?

I'm assuming you are working with something that is under two inches wide.

Plan A (not yet tried, but I may do it this way next time): make a simple miter box. The base of the box is a piece of wood the same width as the material you want to scarph. Next time, while you are ripping the parts, cut a few feet of pine to check the setup, and save them for this use. A 6 to 1 scarph on a 2 inch piece would be 1 foot long, so cut the base of your miterbox to that length, and also cut two pieces of 1x6 pine to the same length. Assemble these three pieces of wood with screws into a deep "U" shaped arrangement, with the part that is the same width as your stock being the base, and sandwiched bwtween the two 1x6's.

To use this as a miterbox, set it in front of you, so it runs left to right, and align your saw so that it uses the inside, right, edge of the front board as a guide for the saw, which cuts diagonally across the board, and uses the inside left edge of the back board as its other guide. Keeping the saw against both of these edges will ensure that it cuts straight as it goes down through your material. Use a wedge pressing against the part of your material that is NOT being cut off to keep it from siding around in this quicky miterbox.

Just want to do 1 quick scarph? Use 2 large 'C' clamps t hold the two strips of wood together. Arrange the clamps so that the backs of the clamps serve as guides for your saw.

For the gunwales on my canoe I scarphed some 3/4 by 1 inch oak by laying the two pieces on top of one another, drawing a diagonal line with a straightedge, and cutting through both pieces with a handheld circular saw. I did a sloppy job, but I cleaned up the mess with a hand plane. It would probably have been faster to use a handsaw, or even a saber saw.

If you clamp the two pieces together and spend a few minutes with a cheap coping saw you can cut some incredible scarphs. As long as you keep the cut at 90 degrees to the surface of the wood you can cut dovetails, curliqueues, or other strange jig-saw puzzle shapes, and the top part will happily drop right into the bottom piece.

Just a few thoughts. Hope they help.

Paul G. Jacobson