My framing square was lying to me for 6 years and I never knew

Picked up a cheap framing square when I started out and trusted it on every job. Last week I was fighting a wall that wouldn't square up no matter what, so I checked the square against a known 90 degree corner and it was off by nearly 1/16th over 12 inches. That's enough to throw off every layout point on a long wall. I grabbed a new one for 18 bucks at the lumber yard and suddenly everything lined up. Has anyone else ever had a bad square waste their time this way?

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the_daniel10d ago

Wait, did you check if the square was actually square before you bought it? Because here's the thing nobody talks about, cheaper squares can bend or warp from just riding around in a toolbox or getting knocked against a bench, and the factory settings might be fine when you grab it off the rack but that doesn't mean it stays that way. I've seen guys buy a brand new one, drop it once on concrete, and then it's off by more than your old one was. You got lucky that the new one worked, but you should always test a square against a straight edge or a known good corner before you trust it on anything that matters. It takes ten seconds to do and it would have saved you six years of headaches. Also, that 1/16th over 12 inches adds up way faster than people realize, by the time you're framing a 20 foot wall you're talking about nearly a quarter inch off, which is enough to mess up door openings and drywall seams. So yeah, bad squares are real, but so are good squares that went bad without you knowing.