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Comment by madcaptenor

2 days ago

Maybe you could start off with a long string and then mark off its midpoint, the midpoints of the halves, and so on. Then you wouldn't have to cut a new string every time you want to measure something.

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madcaptenor

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saalweachter  2 days ago

There's also the concept of a story stick.

When working on a project where you need a bunch of things to be the same, you take a stick and mark on it at various points the dimensions you're using -- when working on a house, it might be things like the heights of outlet boxes and switches, the width and height of rough opening for doors, the height of window sills, etc etc.

Then, you just use the stick as the reference, using the marking for outlets to position all of the outlets instead of measuring the height of the floor in inches or millimeters or cubits or whatever each time. It's kind of like a measuring jig.

("Measure once, cut twice" is a superior methodology which has been unfairly maligned for generations.)

  • tonyarkles  2 days ago

    This works fantastic for building furniture as well, where the absolute dimension doesn’t matter as much as all of the pieces having matching dimensions. A cabinet with drawers, for example. The story stick captures the spacing between the drawers, the width of the drawer, the slightly smaller height of the drawer face, etc.

    It feels really imprecise the first time you set the fence on a table saw based on a marking on a stick instead of a precise specific value but the results are hard to argue with.

    • saalweachter  2 days ago

      With carpentry in particular, it is extremely powerful to make multiple cuts at the same time -- set a fence once and then cut everything that needs to match at the same time, or stack multiple pieces together, or cut a board to length before ripping it into several pieces that need identical lengths.

      Sure, check your measurements to be sure they're correct, but the more times you can cut based on the same measurement, the less measurement error can creep in.

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Dilettante_  2 days ago

What, and use the same thing to measure stuff anytime you measure something? Like that's ever gonna catch on! Next you're gonna tell me to use my lower arm as a measuring stick!