#Builders tape measure reading in pro#
Alternatively, the Roughneck Pro tape measure has a comfortable soft rubber casing, metric and imperial markings.īrowse laser measures to calculate distance with the digital range estimator, a pocket-sized laser measure with digital display, or the Draper laser distance measurer and stud detector with an audio function for when studs are detected. We stock a variety of standard tape measures including the popular Stanley tape measure, with easy to read graphics and armour on the first 6" of the blade to reduce breakage. Fill your toolbox with essential tape and laser measures at Toolstation to measure anything with ease and the utmost accuracy. Each FastCap tape measure even has a built-in pencil sharpener-a feature still missing from the rest of my high-tech tools.Any tradesman will know the importance of accuracy on site. FastCap, another woodworking supplier, sells hybrid tapes that have conventional English or metric markings on one edge but give you a strip of white space on the other for erasable pencil notations of your own. Lee Valley, a woodworking supply company, sells blank tape measures called Precision Story Tapes: You can make your own marks on them with an indelible pen and end up with a permanent dimensional record of each job. Story poles are easy to make, but if you prefer tape measures, compromises are available. I've even used a story pole to hang pictures. My house is so old that it contains almost no level surfaces or right angles to orient my office bookcases, cabinets, and desk, I used a spirit level to draw a reference line on the Sheetrock at countertop height all the way around the room, like an artificial horizon, then used a story pole to position elements above and below it.
Electricians use them to position outlets, fixtures, and switches. Masons, shinglers, and siding installers still use them to maintain the spacing of their courses. Eighteenth-century house framers used them to keep track of ceiling-joist heights (hence the name).
Ancient Egyptians used them in constructing the pyramids.
Story poles, in one form or another, have helped builders of all kinds for aeons. A story pole is rigid, and if you need both hands you can clamp or tack it in place.Ī story pole is a homemade measuring rod on which the only markings are ones you make yourself I also never had to rest an elbow on my tape measure to keep it from whipping back into itself as I groped for a pencil. Once I'd done that, I didn't need to remember that the bookcases on the north wall were going to be 11½ inches deep I just had to find the depth line on my north-bookcase story pole, then transfer that mark to a sheet of plywood and make my cuts.
#Builders tape measure reading in install#
To create mine, I squared off the ends of several long pieces of 1 x 2–inch pine, then marked each one with labeled lines representing the critical dimensions of the cabinetry I was planning to build and install in the office: lengths, widths, depths, spacings. For many projects a story pole is easier to manipulate than a tape or a fold-up ruler, and because it contains no extraneous information it acts as a check against careless errors. A story pole is a homemade measuring rod on which the only markings are ones you make yourself, specifically for the job at hand. I also acquired quite a few analog tools-including story poles, which I'd learned about from a carpenter friend.
Even so, the office turned out pretty well, and in the course of building it I became the owner of virtually every kind of power tool. The project was highly educational, in the sense that by the time it was finished I possessed many skills I ought to have had before I began. A couple of years after my wife and I bought our house, I gutted an unused room and turned it into an office.
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