5 cool things you may not know about your tape measure

boing
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I know a carpenter who always measures from 10CM out to avoid the thing at the end of the tape measure. Once in a great while, he forgets to subtract the 10cm

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That deserves a place on a prominent shelf, or possibly framing.

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Huh. How about that.

Mine stopped a whole bible.

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Aw man, my tape measure doesn’t have any of those things.

71vAsm0pYSL._SL1500_.jpg1500×977 71 KB

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ten Cun per Chi/“chinese foot”, actually.

Nowadays a Chi is definted as being (depending if you’re in Mainland China or Hong Kong) exactly 33 1⁄3 cm (1/3rd of a meter) or exactly 14 5⁄8 inches, respectively.

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They love it. Dangerously.

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The great thing with that is that if you sell it for, say, $100 (meh, not a lot), you’ll get it back as a birthday present.

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I had a shop teacher who fixed the wiggle of the end of his tape measure, then understood why it was there in the first place when some measurements started coming out wrong. He had the decency to tell the class his anecdote.

He also talked about the time he made sure his fridge was level and had a hard time keeping the door shut.

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I want to thank you, sire, for finally making me realize why my freezer in my last apartment wouldn’t stay shut.

@glenblank
I graduated high school in 2005. Had to take one year of shop in middle school. Did not learn any of this, the teachers basically assumed no one wanted to be year and just wanted us to have fun and not kill ourselves. High school had shop classes, but they were electives and not generally taken by people who did well academically. Which is sad, but the result of both 1) years of built-up stigma and 2) the administrators scheduling shop classes during, for example, the only periods where AP math and science courses were offered.

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I knew about the ones that my tape measure had but it (a Rabone Supalock from many years ago) did not have the scribing feature or the slot so these are NOT standard across all tapes - and meant I couldn’t gloat about knowing those tricks - also my tape has that 1/16th extra but has a recess for the hook. Some older Stanley Powerlocks seem to be similar in design to my Rabone

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