Measuring and Layout - The Final Event

This should be a short one because there is just too many tips, tricks and techniques for using the common tools you should have for your DIY projects.  Instead of a horribly long post about the merits, ins and outs and graphs and tables of the accuracy and precision of each tool - we'll explore them individually in a process I like to call: "YouTube learning".

What?!

Take a walk with me here, because I'm on to something huge,  I think.  You're set to watch the latest kitty video that your sister told you about on YouTube.  You know the one, you silly kitty video watcher.  The fat kitty tries to fit into too small of a box and we all sit around and laugh at why kitties like boxes so much.  We don't get it, but kitty sure does.

Why are kitties always in boxes on the internet?

Go ahead, watch it.  I know you want to.  But here's part of the trick - why did you watch it?  This is a DIY site for engineers.  We are practical.  We are calm.  We are calculating, we don't watch kitties jump into boxes.  But we did.  What's the other part of the trick you ask?  Go on over to YouTube.  Search for a funny video, or choose from some of the top ones for the day.  Book a solid 15 or more minutes to go through this exercise, but try to only catch "short" videos, say, three minutes or less.

Where did you end up?

Or, did you never quit and are on a never ending spiral of YouTube learning?  Starting at the above, and using only the recommended videos on the right.  Here's my story.

Fat Kitty in Box

Kitten Meets Hedgehog

Cool new Army tire technology

Future Bike

Wireless homopolor motor strange phenomenon
Gummi bear dropped into potassium chlorate

and ending with this monster:

and so on..

What's happening here and why are we even talking about this?  I don't know.  Somehow, my brain, and it may only be me, went down a weird path starting at kitty and ended at a crazy LED flashlight?  Should you be worried?  Probably.  But I like to think of the abstract idea that our minds, arguable the greatest computers in the world, are craving knowledge and information.  YouTube is a drug for that.  It may not always be good for you, but it satisfies your thirst for learning, entertainment; the firing of neurons.  Now here's a crazy thought for you to ponder: when you learn like this, are you consciously engaged or does your brain let your subconscious take over, kind of like when you "zone out" and stare into space?  Can you learn better, or faster, or retain more by letting your brain walk around as it chooses?  Should we let it, the most powerful thing on the planet, loose like that?  I'm curious to know if anyone has studied this, and what this phenomenon is called.  I can't find any research, but I'm not plugged into the medical world very much.  If anyone has more on this, I'm all ears.

I stumbled into this style thinking after reading the book, The Four Hour Chef, by Tim Ferriss.

http://fourhourchef.com/

Tim walks you through what he's discovered about learning.  The book is more about a new way to learn rather than a bunch of recipes, so I was hooked.  He believes that we can obtain 95% functionality of world class effort by careful study and observation.  It was also the first book published by Amazon, another groundbreaking feat, so I had to have it for that reason too.  While reading it, I was sitting in training, bored, and asked myself, is this the best way to learn? My company is spending tons of money on us right now, and we just aren't engaged.  What am I engaged in?  Kitty videos.  What if the learning piece was fast paced, engaging but not too deep all at once?  Would we be attentive and retentive?  I pushed to implement this at work, and either I'm too crazy, or I just don't get it.  No fish took the bait.

I think "YouTube learning" is analogous to how we read blogs, the newspaper, flip channels, etc.  Our brain is moving very fast and YouTube is just a great way to keep it stemmed.  What were the results of your YouTube experience?

And that's how we'll talk about measuring tools and their uses.  Ta da!  We will introduce them as our brain, or our projects, need them.  I don't see the need to compile a huge database in one post of how to use every tool I talked about in Measuring and Layout - Part II.  You won't remember it by the end, because your brain doesn't work that way.  You'll remember the post about the widget where we used the caliper to measure the depth because it will be an Aha! moment.  This is what I think anyways.  Good thing blogs are all about free thinking, eh?

PS - if you really want your mind blown, check out the Brain Games series that's hosted by National Geographic.  It will really push the limits of the way you think.

Tape Measures - Finally

I really want to do an experiment with my trusty Stanley tape, but I just don't have the time this go-round.  However, here are some tips to get you started:

Learn to read it!  The smallest marks on this model are in sixteenths of an inch.  The second largest are in eighths, the next are quarters and halves and finally the inch marks.  Don't sit there and count marks like a caveman, get familiar with your fractions and ways to do divisions (halves, etc.) in your head.  I might have to put some tips up on that...

Read it and weep.

Pro tip: "Typically" when working on trim or cabinets, you would read a measurement to someone in pure inches.  For example, measure a cut and yell out to the guy at the saw, "57 and 3/16."  For whatever reason, cabinet makers like to work in inches, they must have forgotten that there are 12 of them in one foot.  Framers, on the other hand, don't have time for that and the same measurement would be called out as: "Four foot nine and a quarter."  A quarter because typically framers work fast, and that kind of accuracy isn't needed.  Now you know the lingo.

There are other marks on a standard tape that really aren't too relevant right now.  Think "YouTube learning".  They indicate where your standard stud spacing should be and some other details.

Pay attention to the "tip".  A new tape measure can retract into the housing at a pretty good rate.  Take care to not get your finger caught in that train wreck or you'll pay the price.  But more important than your finger is the tab on the end.  Imagine that the tab gets bent and is not out of square.  You could lose a sixteenth or greater of accuracy in your measurements because you were careless with your tool.

If you've noticed, the tab on the end has some movement to it.  This allows you to accurately take inside and outside measurements by adapting for the thickness of the tab.  A critical tip here is to pull the tape tight when you're hooked over a board (outside measurements) and push the slack out when taking inside measurements.

For inside measurements.

"Calibrate" your tape by checking the fit and finish of the tab.  The fit should be tight enough to slide with just the right amount of pressure.  Vague, eh?

For outside measurements.

Check this against your other tape measures if you keep several scattered around.  You can really mess up some cuts, especially if dealing with trim work, if your tapes are off from each other.

Keep it Straight - your accuracy goes down exponentially if your tape isn't straight when you measure.  This is often hard to account for when you are working alone and trying to center a painting in a large wall.  Think about it like this:

If the tape were to sag or wasn't pulled straight, we would be measuring the hypotenuse of a right triangle, like the one below:

Introducing errors such as these:

Measurements in inches.

Measurements in inches.  Errors increase as the angle increases (deviations over shorter "true" measurements.

Where the graph is a representation of the table, whereupon and such-forth they both represent the aforementioned triangle picture.  All measurements are in inches.  As you can tell, the errors, and your precision, grow out of control astronomically - some would even say exponentially.  The phenomenon that the errors increase over smaller "true" measurements is a property of the tangent function.  Most of these errors are smaller than the resolution of our tape measure, but just be aware that the problem is there!

Marking 101

Now that we're doing our best to make accurate measurements, let's move on to converting accuracy into precision.  You're all set to make your mark on a project for a cut.  Take some time and bend the tape so that the edge is flat on the surface.  Use a sharp pencil, and not a carpenter's, or framing pencil, for your fine work.  Lastly, make the mark in a V shape, with the apex at your intended reference spot.  This trick will help you remember which end of the line you intended to mark.

Like so.  Sorry it's blurry.

Now, you have to determine your cutting convention.  Do you cut the line, do you leave the line or do you split the line?  Stick with it, but here's another pro tip: make an X to indicate the waste side.  This helps you remember which side of the line to cut after you've walked to the saw and forgotten.

X marks the spot to NOT cut.

Depending on what saw you're using, draw a straight line bifurcating the V mark.  When framing and using a miter saw, no mark is necessary as the saw cuts straight anyways- because you did set up your saw before use, right?  Personally I leave the line, or split it.  Always easy to come back and shave a hair off, depending on saw type of course.  It's hard to shave a hair off a large rip cut with a circular saw.

Inside Measurements

I don't have a good tip for inside measurements.  I bend my tape around which is considered bad juju.  I've never been off lately, but I have made thousands of measurements and cuts.  Some people insist on butting the back of the tape body against the surface and adding in the length to the marking on the tape.  I don't trust this because there is slack inside the roll and you just never quite know where you stand.  Another way I've seen it done is to measure from one end, make a mark and measure from the other end to that mark and add them together.  This creates two problems for me: the extra work adds extra errors and the added math can really complicate a good measurement.  Go ahead, add 9/16 plus 3 and 3/8 quickly in your head.

Add 3 inches.  To what, we don't know..

The Speed Square

I'll close this long post up with a video for two reasons: I don't think I can talk about the humble speed square better than Ethan Ewing can in the video below.

This guy knows his stuff.  While I haven't watched all of his videos, he does a great job explaining the ins and outs of the speed square.  I'm confident to recommend his other stuff sight unseen.  Just remember that the square is great for rough work.  I doubt you'd see one in a machine shop used to setup an angle, where a sine bar would work better.  For dimensional lumber, however, you can't go wrong, or with setting up your fence on your saw if you don't have an engineer's square.

The second reason is naturally, go to YouTube and see where your learning path takes you!  I hope you enjoyed the series, even though it feels half complete to me.  Coming soon we'll use these tools to make something pretty neat.  Thanks for reading!