Can we talk about using a marking knife instead of a pencil on maple?
Pencil lines left a fuzzy gap on my maple drawer fronts in the shop last Tuesday, so I switched to a marking knife and the joints closed up tight enough that my dry fit needed a tap from a mallet, and now I want to know if anyone else has made that switch and what knife they use.
Honestly this is one of those small changes that quietly fixes a bunch of other stuff too. Fuzzy pencil lines on maple are basically a gap you built in on purpose and then got mad about later. Same thing happens with tape lines on painted walls or chalk marks on tile, the mark itself is wider than the cut you want. A knife gives you a cut edge instead of a smeared line, so the tool sits right in the groove and there is no guesswork. I use a simple Blue Spruce with a flat back and just pull it once, light pass. Only real downside is you have to remember which face is your reference or you knife the wrong side of the line.