My wife wanted a tape measure for her interior decorating project. Used to be that a 25' tape measure was a tool to be cherished, but then we got involved in home remodeling projects and they became just another disposable tool. I've lost count of the number of tape measures we've gone through in the last few years.
Anyway, I have one, but the end has gotten boogered and it won't stay hooked on anything. I bought
cheap green one, but the return spring died after about six months. So now we need another one. I see this one on
Amazon, and I remember the name
Lufkin being a good name for measurement tools, so I order it.
It shows up, my wife tries using it, but where are the inches? It's got feet and feet are divided a couple of different ways, but there is no running total of inches. I never realized that tape measures had different marking systems. Well, okay, 100 foot tapes are different, and there are metric tape measures, but I thought all American tape measures were the same. Or maybe I just never noticed because I was able to adapt to whatever markings they used.
So I took another look on Amazon and found this one.
It has two scales: the top one measures in feet and inches and the bottom scale shows the measurement in inches.
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| Jack's Stanley 12' PowerLock Tape Measures |
Told the Tuesday lunch crew about this and Jack brings his two 12 foot Stanley tape measures. The difference here is the hook on the end. The one on the bottom has a conventional hook. These will slide back and forth a short distance, about a sixteenth of an inch to allow for the thickness of the hook when making inside or outside measurements. The upper one has a bigger hook with a bend designed to hook over nail.
Now Dennis shows us this old
Empire aluminum framing square with more numbers and scales than you can shake a stick at. Some of them are labeled and make sense, some are not.
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| Rafter lengths per foot run for common, hip and some other stuff |
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| Drill size for various wood screws |
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| Lumber Dimension Table |
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| Fraction to Decimal Conversion Table |
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| Mystery Numbers |
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| Mystery Scale |
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| Scales divided into 10ths & 12ths of an inch |
When I was framing houses, an aluminum framing square set you up a level from a common nail pounder. We didn't have much use for all the fancy scales. All you really needed to know was that when you were cutting a hip or valley rafter, you used 17" as the run length instead of 12" as you would for common rafters. I never got an aluminum square. Years later I bought a steel framing square. I still have it. It doesn't have any fancy scales or tables, and it's getting kind of rusty.
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| Stanley Steel Framing Square |
There's quite a bit of difference between generic plastic tape measure and correct Stanley tape measure. 3/4" in 6 feet or less.
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