How a story stick fixed my wobbly bookcase

I was building a simple bookcase and the shelves kept coming out uneven. My neighbor, who's a cabinetmaker, told me to use a story stick for marking all the shelf dados at once. I took a straight piece of scrap, marked each shelf position on it, and then used it to guide my cuts. Now every shelf fits perfectly without any guesswork.

4 comments

4 Comments

parker_hall51mo ago

Man, casey342's right-it just takes the worry out of measuring.

flores.mark21d ago

Yeah, it's saved me so much time on tricky projects...

casey3421mo ago

Does using a story stick like that also help when you're working with wood that isn't perfectly straight? I realized it copies any small bends in the board so all your cuts still line up right. The stick just becomes a perfect pattern for that one job. It stops those little errors you get from measuring each time. Seems like such a basic idea but it fixes so many problems.

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tessaw961mo ago

My buddy tried building a shelf with warped pine. He kept measuring each board and nothing fit. Made a story stick from the worst board and suddenly all the pieces matched up.

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