snip

AAMOF, tape measures aren't even necessary in woodworking. Many furniture
and cabinet makers go with a stick with the project measurements marked
off linearly. It's called a "story stick" and is much more accurate than using
a tape measure. Save the story stick and you can build another project with
the _exact_ same dimensions as the original 50 years later ... you can't
do that with a tape measure unless you use the same one.



Are you kidding me? I'm not sure where my tape measure is 50% of the time
and I'm going to keep track of a stick for 50 years? ;-)

todd

That was a laugh out loud one! I'm sure there are european trained
furniture makers who can and do keep story sticks for 50 years. Me,
I'm with Todd. If they'd just put a "page" function like on
portable phones, on pocket tapes ...

Actual "measured" lengths aren't that important (unless you're
doing built ins. Its far more important that all parts that
are supposed to be the same length are in fact the same
length. If I need parts to fit between A and B I put two
sticks - with sqaure ends, in the space, slide them to fit
the desired distance and clamp them together. On the SCMA
I use the sticks to set the stop and cut all those parts at
the same time. As long as the parts fit properly I don't
care what the tape measured length is.

charlie b