Built a cedar planter box last weekend and the measurements were off by an inch

I spent Saturday morning building a raised planter box for my back porch in Austin. I measured everything twice like I always do, but when I went to assemble the sides, one board was a full inch too short. I had to take the whole thing apart and recut that piece. The funny thing is that I used the exact same tape measure for all the cuts. My neighbor came over and pointed out that the board might have been slightly warped when I measured it. I finished the box by Sunday evening and it looks fine now, but that extra day threw off my whole weekend plan. Has anyone else had a cutting mistake like this that taught you to double check board straightness before measuring?

3 comments

3 Comments

lisas786d ago

Oh man, warped lumber is the worst. Did you buy the boards from a big box store? I swear half the wood there is already bent before you even get it home. I always try to lay my boards flat on the ground and eyeball them now before cutting. Sucks you lost a whole day but at least it came out looking good in the end.

jesse_smith105d ago

Three warped boards and a sore back later, I'm basically a professional lumber eyeballer now.

davidshah5d ago

Stack them on a flat floor before you even load them into your truck. I had a crew once spend half a day planing down boards that looked fine in the aisle but turned into potato chips once we cut them. Now I grab the straightest ones from the back of the pile and push down on each end to check for twist. If you can rock one corner even a little bit, leave it behind unless you want to fight with the table saw for the rest of the day.