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The day I stopped fighting with my tape measure and started believing it
I was framing a closet in a house in Denver last month, and I kept having to cut 2x4s twice because I was measuring wrong. My buddy Dave watched me struggle for a solid 20 minutes before he asked why I wasn't hooking the tape on the end stud. I told him I always just held my thumb at the 1-inch mark and added it back later, like my dad taught me. He laughed and said I'd been making it harder than it needed to be for 15 years. Has anyone else been doing something dumb with basic tools and just never questioned it?
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scott.alex23d ago
Adding it back later" - sounds like my method for adding ice to a drink and forgetting what I started with.
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blake_owens23d ago
That part about "adding it back later" hit me hard. I did the exact same thumb trick for years and never once thought about the hook. My dad was a carpenter too and he swore by the thumb method, said it was "real measuring" or something. It's funny how we just pick up these little habits and never question them even when they make things harder. Once I actually started using the hook like it was designed for, my cuts got way cleaner and I stopped wasting wood.
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alex82023d ago
And you know what's wild? I only figured out the hook thing after I accidentally bent one inward on an older tape measure and it clicked for me. Before that I used to hold the tape in place with my left thumb and then try to read it over my hand, which was always a pain. My old boss actually got mad at me once for being slow on a big framing job and showed me the hook trick in like ten seconds. Felt pretty stupid after that, but hey, at least now I'm not fighting my own thumb anymore.
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