You had ROCKS?! Holy, you were one a them rich townie kids, weren’t you…?
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I’ve been buying hand tools for my kids as Christmas presents every year, and hopefully teaching them to the best of my ability how to use those tools. Maybe this year it’s time for tape measures and speed squares. Lord knows I can never find where I left my tape measure (or my wife’s).
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Nah - I’m from the other side of the tracks. We had to get our rocks from the second hand store.
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Sometimes the local church group would gather together and get us a rock, at xmas…
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that’s more discerning than 75+% of the electorate here O_O
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I was genuinely disturbed when I saw
http://www.valuesvotersummit.org/speakers
I live in Fairfax County. It’s that deep blue county in the northeast. (with 1.14 million souls, it’s what keeps the state democratic.)
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I went off cheap laser gadgets, and I’ve tried a lot of them. The projected line is as staight as you like, but it’s not as parallel or perpendicular as it is supposed to.
Sure, on a lot of DIY projects it usually doesn’t matter that much, especially when the device’s margin of error is within the margin of error you’re going to produce yourself anyway. But then there is at least a 5 to 1 probability that the cheap laser gadget will conk out when it actually would be useful, only for you to find out that it uses three or five exotic button cell batteries that can’t be replaced at a pinch.
For the usual stuff, a couple of measuring sticks, maybe a tape, spirit level, plumb bob, square, etc will do just fine.
For tricky stuff I borrow professional grade equipment or break out the old Zeiss Ni2 I’ve got kicking around.
The one application where I still use a cheap laser thingy is projecting a line on the living room floor at the correct distance from the dart board. No, tell a lie, I’ve still got that par of scissors with a mounted laser because it looks like a prop from a cheap cyberpunk movie. (The exotic batteries argument still holds up there, though. Although in this case, fitting an extra mount for an AAA battery would only make it look more cybetpunk-ish, so there is that.)
Disclaimer: civil engineer, worked in geodesy for a bit. DIY enthusiast from a long line of guys who knew how to make stuff.
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Luxury…
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Thanks for posting a Wonderful Thing
People don’t pay nearly enough attention to school board elections and the like. That’s the kind of super-local level where a determined person can do a lot of good – or, alternatively, an annoying busybody or a nutcase with an agenda can do a lot of damage.
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Well I’m a dirty millennial (although at the top of the age bracket), and I learnt from the video that the case length is indicated to be added to the measured length. But I’ve somehow managed to use a tape measure countless times without that knowledge. I should also add that I won the “technicraft award” for form two (12 year olds) at school for my proficiency in the four taught subjects of home ec, sewing, woodwork, and metalwork.
When I watched that video I thought the opportunity was lost to teach people how to use metric measurements. They were even printed right there on the tape.
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Americans like to forget about metric, unless they are interested in the sciences.
There’s a particular kind of ruler that’s great for making perpendicular lines. It’s not as accurate as a T-square and Triangle, but it’s damn useful/
18 inches long, graduated in inches.
Now, What if you need to work in metric?
well, they offer a metric version too.
One big problem, though.
It’s 20 inches long. The 50 cm grid doesn’t extend to the edges of the ruler.
If you wanted to mark a (short) parallel line that’s 4 inches distance, it’s trivial to align the ruler, and mark against the short edge. One easy step.
You can’t do that with a 10 cm distance-- because the gradations don’t extend to the short end of the ruler. You’d have to measure out and mark two dots, and connect them with a straight line.
I’d like to know what those arcane markings on the yellow bit are. Some sort of American number system, perhaps? Does it measure in Stanleys?
probably, yeah.
where?
Same here. Never knew that the red mark was to indicate space between studs, nor did I think to use the case width as part of a measurement.
Charity rocks!?!? Luxury! We used to DREAM of charity rocks. We had to make due with some mud we scraped off workman’s boots!
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… or guns & drugs, apparently.
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Sometimes the local church group would gather together and throw rocks at us… on high holidays they used catapults, and this one Easter, they smashed my pet rock with a bigger rock…
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