Comments on: Buying good tools cheap – Tape measures

By: J Guengerich

J Guengerich — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:50:00 +0000

Thanks for the answer Paul. I was playing a youtube video of you cutting the miters for a picture frame at a woodworking show and my gal was in the room, I told her that was one of my goals, to be able to accurately eyeball angles. Hey, if I can nail 6oz portions of fish and 10 & 12 oz portions of prime rib at work I should, in theory, be able to get to this goal after a few thousand attempts.
When I worked construction we did as as one of the other posters stated, we’d take off the first inch if we wanted an accurate measurement. The times we’d do this were the times we were nervous, trim, stairs,… the rest of the work never bothered us but the areas that came closest to furniture grade always made us a bit more paranoid.

By: Paul Sellers

Paul Sellers — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 03:11:00 +0000

Thanks for the insight Henry. It makes good sense for different trades to have thicker, wider, heavier tapes.

By: Paul Sellers

Paul Sellers — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 03:03:00 +0000

Slack at the end cap is designed to accomodate the thickness of the end cap so that when it’s hooked onto the end of a piece of wood or board the distance from inside the cap measures an exact measurement to the marks on the tape. When you measure in between and therefore push the end cap into say a corner for instance, the moving part shunts up the exact thickness of that end cap and so the two measurements are the same and show an exact distance. I generally have not found these distances to be inaccurate at all.

By: Paul Sellers

Paul Sellers — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 02:53:00 +0000

Wiggly ends don’t bother me at al as long as they are accurately calibrated for the exact thickness they are designed to adjust for, ie the wiggly bit itself. Generally they are accurate, even cheap ones. I must say I am a fanatice on accuracy on my furniture. Even when I eyeball my dovetails they are generally reversible. In other words I can flip them over and they fit without having measured anything. Angles and all!

By: J Guengerich

J Guengerich — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Paul, I love the smaller tape measures too. I didn’t feel this way in the past because I liked the wide tapes for viewing and the ability to push the across surfaces or span a gap. My Dad always carried a small tape and I never understood why when I was younger. Now that I’m older and have the physical souvenirs of farming, construction, football and firefighting I find it more efficient and less bothersome to have the tape in my pocket ALL the TIME, since I don’t wear my tool belt while I’m building projects. If I kneel down and realize that I need a tape, its there… just like the Stanley 10-049. (BTW, why are they marketing aprons and vest with multiple pockets for woodworking? I don’t want to carry all that weight, Isn’t that what the tool well is for? All that bulkiness too…) I don’t know if this is my paranoid problem concerning tape measures but I always pick through them to find tapes where the hook doesn’t wiggle. It just seems to me that a 1/16″ here and a 1/16″ there ads up to something coming up out of square.
David, I know what you mean about looking at the small tapes, I’m thankful that my vision can be corrected every couple of years to make up for the fuzzies. LOL

By: Erik

Erik — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Paul,
How do you deal with the slack of the end cap? Do you just disregard it by burning an inch usually, and use something more definitive such as a folding rule when setting machines? I caught some grief for using my tape to set machines recently, but I found it just as accurate if you are careful to know you are compressing that 1/16″. They were suggesting using FastCap tapes, which have the cap fixed definitively to the tape with no slack.

By: David Kirtley

David Kirtley — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 01:33:00 +0000

I really dislike the tapes with imperial and metric units. I like them to be separate tapes. The mixed unit measures seem to always have the graduations I need on the wrong side somehow every time I need to measure something.

The one really good thing about the big tape measures though is that those of us that have already had to resort to reading glasses find the larger numbers helpful. Although when you can’t see the graduations, I guess it is moot.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 22:44:00 +0000

I for one am exceedingly glad the US has stayed with “English” measurements. I find it far easier to think in English fractions and multiples than in metric – and professionally I’m a programmer. Woodworking is (should not be) the same as programming. Computers like decimals, my brain prefers the precision and simplicity of fractions. My English mother was evacuated during the blitz to the home of a Berkshire cabinet maker whom I remember for his old Berkshire accent and his everlasting antipathy for metric. Of round-abouts I’ll never forget: “right the way round.”