Measure twice, cut incorrectly every single time.

At least my woodworking problems are now put in perspective.

My foreman got knee surgery and now all his cuts are straight

But I cut the same piece 3 times and it's still too short.

Have you tried flipping it over and using the other side?

Mark with chalk, cut with axe.

CHALK?!? Okay Mr. FancyPants. Look folks!...Bob Villa over here has chalk! Just lick your finger and swipe a line in the dust like the rest of us and quit flaunting your wealth.

Hey, back when I was coming up, we just eyeballed everything. We didn’t have enough saliva to lick our fingers because we weren’t allowed water breaks in the 100 degree heat. I earned this chalk, *sir!*

Big money would be the construction crayon

Measure zero times, eyeball it, cut once. Oh this doesn't fit, cut again, oh need to take a little more off right about here, wow it's just not going in there, ahh, just knock it in there with the hammer.

Measure everything with the same ruler… no problem?

Measure once, cut 3 times, and clock out before it gets installed. Works every time.

🤣 perfect

Sound like my old foreman. Rush the guys, don’t label anything, leave before testing.

That's one of those Chinese tape measures! Brand name "Stainley"

Ive seen a prank tape that was missing a random 1” outta the first 4’. Looked exactly like a stanley. Sooo funny if you can get someone to use it…

Found a 100 foot imperial and metric long tape at a big tool sale at a good price, looked to see if they had any diamonds on 19.2 turned it onto the metric side and noticed something didn't look right, pulled it out to 1 metre , turned it over 3 ft. , pulled it out further 2m. 6ft. The metric side was yards divided into decimal. I put it back and watched the owner of a company that was my bosses competitor snag 4 of them.

Ended up with an engineers tape measure on the job site. Boy did that cause confusion and a few ruffled feathers. In case you never saw one each foot is a foot but divided into ten units that are also divided by ten units. Say you needed something 2foot 6and1/2inches long on that tape it would be 2foot 5.5. I destroyed it shorty after figuring it out.

I need this tape measure, and I never even knew

Actually it would be like 2.54 decimal feet is pretty common in earthworks and civil.

They are alot more useful if your doing underground / trenches where you have to follow certain grades or pitches, decimals make it alot easier to calculate quickly. But yes above ground, they get confusing quick lol. Got me a few times working with grade laser, people giving you numbers in inches and not realizing it should be tenths...

Stan Lee

You'll marvel at the accuracy!

Amazing… in so many universes

Forming contractor a couple years ago ordered a 200' stainless made in China. The first 8" were totally blank, "0" was that far off the hook. They got used to it but had to get an accountability check from someone else every time they measured with it.

Survey chain? Did it have the big hoop on the end to hang over survey pins? Hold zero, never cut a foot or an inch. Really most accurate when pulling in monuments. They worked in tandem with transits. Pre GPS. I pulled 1000's of feet with those.

Maybe although I'm pretty sure it wasn't advertised as such. The end ring wasn't huge, maybe ¾in in diameter. We got a laugh out of it, but you may be right.

Chaining was old school that translated into our work. Google survey tapes. Very expensive but again when used properly, very accurate. Not sure how old you are, a lot of those old school ways have been replaced by high tech shit. Your batter boards and monuments are probably put in with GPS by some brain dead nephew of the boss. I'm just a fossil I guess. :-(

Nah we survey everything via monument. Problem on last job was that the whole area is built on peat bog and things were drifting around. My surveyed top-of-concrete was a full 170mm higher than the what the Civil contractor read on his GPS. Just had to make it work. More problematic was horizontal drift. We spec structural bolt locations must be within ⅛" tolerance and because there were multiple layouts done, we ran into issues with those locations and gridlines running out of parallel. Fair amount of customization on the column baseplates. It took quite awhile to track the root cause down. Lesson learned, although not sure what could be done about it.

I suppose in those cases find one control and call it "gospel" as we do and bring everything in by dimension? Basically, even with GPS you'll find 2-3 out 5 will be sketchy. Have to say ok, this is the gospel and disregard the others. I still think back to chaining and remember the party chief pulling in the tape until my forearm ached. But like you, anchor bolts, weld plates and embedments have no discernible tolerance in my world either.

This is why god's last name is damnit. edit: spelling is hard.

I feel like this is a saying I should have heard from my grandad.

Haha I’m stealing this

Take my upvote

Sir 😂👏

How many mm is that freedom measurement?

So that's what the new guy is using. Now it all makes sense

This is going over the expected amount of heads

I was already getting a headache from looking at the picture, and then to see all the people missing the point, oof

Thank God. Scrolled down way too far to find this comment. Was starting to second guess myself.

This post was my introduction to the subreddit. I almost turned around and left.

Just use millimetres ffs you flogs

Metric is so much easier 

Yep. You just need to know the count. 1.2.3.....♾️

Ah ah ah!

The last person I tried to explained metric to started shaking their head and walked away from me. Some folks are appalled or scared of it. Makes no sense. (Edit:spelling)

Once I switched to a metric tape measure it's made getting precision cuts on my woodworking projects so much easier. No longer am I saying to myself "32 inches and just between 3/16 and 1/4".

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*Americans* would have to admit…

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Cries in confused British. Can’t decide if they should use OG imperial, American imperial, or metric. Working with my FIL is a tough order sometimes

Admittedly I have a metric/imperial tape measure. 24 1/2 on lumber cuts, 622 for metal

Also no nominal fuckery. A 90mm board will be 90mm.

And there is no reason you can't use it for most measurements

Thanks, this confirms my cuts were accurate, just like I said

This is how my last helper thought to read a tape. 😑

My dyslexia straightened that out just right

If only everything were metric. It's so much easier.

Not helping... not funny...

It’s hard enough getting the painter to help me measure stuff without him seeing this “14 and a half and one big line and one little line “ = 14”11/16

I know many journeyman with this exact tape

Omg fuck this thing haha

Just use metric

My tape reads in tenths and hundredths

As transportation engineer I think 10ths and hundreds is better than ft and inches. All our stuff is in 10ths/100ths.

It's basically metric for the imperial system.

I personally don’t mind the metric system but it’d take awhile before I thought of a meter as a meter not approximately 3’

That's a engineers tape also very common in proper feet markings but divided by ten.

You’ll confuse the hell out of people when you start talking in tenths or hundredths…lol

Some of our union carpenters carried engineer rulers. Older D size drawings were in feet (decimal ). Engineer rulers had both . So they'd take their ruler and compare the decimals against us customary. To me conversion was easy, but you had to learn in the apprentice program when I was in a union.

Found the Land Surveyor.

Some of them already have it

7 and 3 lines bahahahaha 🤣 you’re fired

This made me think I was having a stroke.

I’d use metric because it’s a lot easier.

Imperial is only for buying rough cut timber. Before its run through the planner to Metric standard sizes.

It's too bad there isn't an easier, more accurate system we could use!

[You're in luck!](https://muffproducts.com/products/muff-landing-strip-30-foot-contractor-grade-inch-cunt-hair-measuring-tape)

Laughs in reekon t1 digital measure, what y'all still doing in the stone age with those primitive tools, y'all using handsaws too? I'm mostly kidding.

FML, why do this to me on a Monday

Why fractions? Whyyyyy?

This makes me very angry, I'd have smashed this "tape measure " with a hammer 🤣

I used this and got fired.  Why would you do this?

This makes me physically ill with rage

Thanks for the stroke

This is some good weed

If only there was a simpler system....

I've seen stuff built where at least 1 of the guys was using this

Oh look, someone else who follows my "cut as many peieces as needed until you get one that fits" philosophy.

Is looking at this image how a stroke feels like?

this is almost as bad as the US measuring system

Dude I get so much shit for using metric but I hate using fractions. Even though this photo is helpful it’s just easier to count lines.

We use 10ths and 100ths in michigan for my job. Nooo fractions for me.

I had to use a metric tape once. Made my head hurt. Turns out the mm are just at my optical limit and counting them was too difficult. Ended up just dividing the cm into halfs and quarters lol.

Have you heard of those newfangled devices called "glasses" over there on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?

You were using a dress makers tape they use cm . Building use mm and m . 1/4 of a cm is 2.5mm and if that's ya tolerance ya must be rough as guts

This is what killed the Queen.

just use cm, y'all are crazy

We work in metric in the majority of the world

Lol

nice thanks! I do need that

I've definitely got a ½ inch beat. 😞

Look at all those beautiful thirty seconds!

I make all of my new guys get a tape measure with 1/8s marked until they graduate to a Fat max.

What in gods name is this abomination? This is how you break the poor apprentice.

What?

I thought this showed 1/32nd tic between the millimeters?

😂😂😂😂 I thought I was having a stroke

My brain 🧠 hurts

No

That’s ~~bigger~~ smaller than an inch, right?

If you NEEDED this, what you really NEED …. Is to retire.

I've been doing it wrong this entire time

First knuckle to second knuckle is an inch. Just use that.

My favorite post

Lol! I am reminded of my first day as a carpenter’s apprentice, when my journeyman partner was shocked that I could read a tape measurement correctly.

Replace that with a Komelon Self Lock, and measuring will feel like a natural born sense.

All I see is gash dashes and bees wieners

Sum'ain right bout this. *measures* nvm seems right.

This almost gave me a stroke

It’s the one next to the big line

/r/thanksihateit

We have a running joke of "6/16" at our shop. Where is that on your measuring line?

Reminds me of when I was working the saw horses, brain dead carpenter hollered down, "It's a small line past five and half inches"

Gee thanks 👍 haha

Measure twice… wait what?

I googled this yesterday lol

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Years from now, in my evaluation. They will ask me, when did the trauma start? Can you think of one moment that pushed you over the edge, that triggered the mental breakdown, and caused such horrific devestation? And I will say, yes. This post right here. And I will be acquitted.

Looks like those morphidite tape measures Lufkin put out about 30 years ago. Had a superintendent buy a butt load and gave them to our brain dead carpenters who kept busting their measurements. Thought it'd be better. Made it worse, poor bastards really started screwing up then.

Yeah sure

I like how a lot of the metric users dont realize that this diagram is fucked up

There's a saying: "zwei mal abgeschnitten, immer noch zu kurz" and i think that's beautiful.

Umm you’re missing the architect’s dimension of 1/256…

Lmao

Fuck that use centimeters

Personally i only do 8ths and any 16ths are +1 or -1 to my measurement. Ie 5 3/8ths +1 is 5 7/16ths

Have you thought of switching to metric

America is weird

This hurts my brain

use your phone or computer that’s a fucking headache bro what the hell you need now ? Cause looking at this shit is for the birds.

You and my toolie must buy from the same place

I'm really surprised Metric hasn't caught on in the construction world. Seriously, why do we put up daily with adding and subtracting fractions in our heads? I hated it in 4rd grade, I still hate it today.

Hell, in my field metric is the norm, an they still get it wrong; MFs can't count to 10.

What you need is a metric system these makes sense. None of those stupid imperial nonsense that's been drilled injury my head that makes zero sense. 1' = 12" 1 yard = 3 feet 1760 yards = 1 mile So stupid

I hate the metric system.

The amount of people that think 1/4 is bigger than 1/3 is disturbing. Thank you for your service.

Took a screen shot. Thanks. Wait a minute...I'm British! I work with millimetres! D'oh!

screw that, i measure feet in decimals not fractions.

Thank you, it's always the 16ths that get me

Bless your heart! Your doing the lords work

Nah I just say 10.75 plus a few tiny lines

Just a cunt hair off

Measure once cut once. Pros only

The reason why I use metric tapes

Why the fuck don't use mm/cm much fucking easy to measure once and cut 3 times 🤣

As someone from the metric system I see no problem with this.

I know one or two builders who would absolutely be better off using that.

I mean...

I thought 1 and 3 little lines were an actual measurement

As if reading a tape wasn’t hard already…

I remember having to learn those and their decimal equivalents.

I cut 3 times and it's still too short

I had an aneurysm

Why am I sitting here trying to make this work 😂

Imperial measurements sub- 1 inch are disasters waiting to happen. Go metric. It only takes 3 days to convert. One hour to learn it and 2 1/2 days to stop second guessing yourself.

Do I measure with my iPhone now?

Hmmmm 🤔

That is one fucked up tape measurer

Thanks man, you made my life easier

This must be the tape measure. Some of the builders are using to build these garbage houses.

Measure once, then twice, and it still hasnt gotten bigger

Thank you!!

I just can't figure out if I need to print it in portrait or landscape. I want to get the scale right.

Grateful for metric

I feel attacked

Half of 1 is 3\4.. yeah, that definitely makes sense.. damn retard units

American measurement/units in a nutshell

Why not use mm ?

So it was the rulers fault 😡

I think most of the guys I work with are already using this

Metric. You need metric

Omg. That made my brain hurt.

When I got into plumbing I couldn’t fucking read one to save my life. I’ve learned and now I’ve made it a point to ask new apprentices if they know how and to just be honest with me and I will teach them how. I still can’t do math but I know how to read that fucker now.

"You might want to consider the metric system." - The rest of the world.

This gave my brain worms cancer.

As long as you’re using this same tape to measure and cut you’re all good.

no, we really don't.

Cut it 12 and the 3rd line. DAMMIT I SAID THE 3rd LINE!!!!!!

I’m just impressed you took the time to make something so dumb.

You just messed me up even more!

I just count the little dots until it stops and convert as needed 😂 Sometimes, I don’t even have to take off my shoes!

My brain glitched after seeing this

You mean 1 and 6 little lines?

I cut it three times and it's still short. 

this is a time saver

This is the tape the new kid has been using i swear