In order to get your measurements right when working on for woodwork projects, you may want to pay attention to the points covered in this post. As you read on, you will learn a whole lot more about effective measuring tips and tricks for carpentry.
If you are new in the woodwork field, you may find certain things a bit confusing at first. This is normal as woodworking requires lots of careful and accurate measurements to craft the most beautiful and useful wooden crafts.
Art of measuring
Measuring is the most technical and critical aspect of woodworking and requires all the attention you can give. Learning how to use your measuring tools accurately is one way you can ensure accurate measurement at all times when crafting your beautiful woodworks.
To enjoy wider acceptance and better success with your woodworks, it is important you master the art of measuring, know the common mistakes to avoid and learn how to use your common measuring tools.
Learn from your mistakes
One thing you can not avoid as a beginner in woodwork is cutting a piece of wood for a project only to discover your measurement was wrong. This will happen a number of times until you learn the rules and abide by them always.
But you can avoid making this costly mistake when you know the rules of measurement and learn how to use your measuring tapes and other measuring devices.
Too short or too long
You can ensure an inaccurate measurement when the piece of wood is too wide or too long, but whereby the piece comes out very small, there is nothing you can do to remedy the situation and that can ruin your entire woodwork project. The best you can do is to join the short piece with another piece of wood to craft something else.
But I want to make sure you don’t have to endure the stress that comes with having to make repeated trips to the workshop in a bid to correct such mistakes.
In this post, I will talk about the most common and seasoned woodwork measuring tips to help you avoid making costly mistakes while working in your woodwork projects.
Difference between nominal dimensions and equal dimensions
If you use lumber from North America, it is important you know they are sold in nominal dimensions and not in actual dimensions. The actual dimension of such lumber is always smaller than the indicated dimensions.
What this means is that if you embark on any woodwork project based on the nominal dimension, you should expect difficulties in the long run.
Even the common plywood is always undersized than the indicated thickness. So whenever you are working on any woodwork project, it is always safe to measure your lumber and not depend on the indicated dimensions for accuracy.
Appropriate Use of Tape Measurement
Now, this is about the most important part of the whole woodwork measurement. These measuring tips and tricks for carpentry wouldn’t be complete without a part explaining about tape measurement.
Mastering the use of a measuring tape is about the most important thing you should focus on when it comes to getting your measurement right with accurate precision. It is actually the accuracy of your measurement that determines how well your woodwork crafts come out at the end of the day.
Measuring tapes are very amazing measurement tools for woodworking and have gone through a series of refinements and upgrades over the years.
However, there are certain common mistakes people make when using these measuring tapes and it is important you master these mistakes and avoid them.
Inadequate use of the end hook
There is a good reason why the end hook of a measuring tape is loosely attached. Whenever you are handling an exterior measurement, it is important you pull the tape very tightly in order to extend the hook fully.
On the other hand, when handling an interior measurement, you need to push the tape very tightly with the aim of giving the tape room to retract fully and compensate for the hook’s thickness.
It is important you ensure your tape is always clean as any foreign material or dirt in the hole of your hook can affect the whole action.
Make use of a steel ruler
However, it is important to point out that a measuring tape is never enough to handle projects like dialing in a fence for the precise cutting of joinery projects.
You can use a steel ruler for accurate measurement of pieces for joinery projects or a dial or digital caliper for measurements under a few inches.
Always Make Use of the Right Marking Tools
Pencil
Your pencil is more useful whenever you are working in your wood workshop than you think. The pencil was originally designed to mark rough woods with the aim of cutting them to rough dimensions for accurate planning. It is also used for other types of finishing works that precede cutting the wood to its final length.
You can use your pencil whenever you are marking your wood lumber for your outdoor projects. However, it is important you always ensure you sharpen your carpenter’s pencil well whenever you are using one. You can either buy a specialized sharpener for it or use the old-time method of whittling the pencil away using a utility knife.
Marking Knife
The marking knife has for a long time been seen as the best way to mark lines while crafting woodwork. Thin lines are the best so the thinner your lines become, the better. Additionally, your marking knife will always leave a slight groove that can be used to get a more comfortable chisel position.
However, you must always remember that mistakes made with marking knives are not easy to be removed. Avoid making very deep grooves so that when marking mistakes occur, they can be easily planed out or sanded.
Mechanical Pencil
Lastly, you can make use of mechanical pencils if all you want to see are pencil marks and not obvious knife marks. The best side of these mechanical pencils is that you are sure to always have the same lines with exact width and you won’t have any need to have any sharpener handy. All you need here are enough pencil leads.
Be Very Clear on Which Part is Waste Wood
If you are a newbie, you must have found yourself in a situation where you cut off the wrong part of the wood by mistake. To avoid the mistake of cutting off the wrong side of the line you can always make a small mark on the waste woodside. An x sign is always an ideal way of marking the waste wood part for easy identification.
Make sure the mark isn’t too big and very close to the line. This will ensure the complete obliteration of the line when you cut the mark off.
When cutting out a part of a piece of wood to be their away, you can put one big X mark on the part to be discarded as waste wood. This is also applicable when working with two joinery pieces, you may want to also put a mark on the two parts to be cut away as waste.
Exclusive Use of Measurement
While cutting all the wood you need for your project all at the same time can be a very efficient way to work, but, sometimes, you have to deal with mistakes creeping in along the line. Such mistakes are common when you are working on very complicated woodwork.
The safest way to work in order to avoid mistakes creeping in is to cut the pieces of wood as you need them. This is the easiest way to measure pieces of wood against the project you are working on.
This will definitely be more time consuming, but you won’t need to waste time and wood recutting and discarding wood pieces that may not fit into the project you are working on. Here are two major tips on how to go about measuring exclusively for each project to avoid mistakes:
Use a ruler, a measuring tape or calipers
Measure with your ruler, measuring tape or calipers: this will go a long way to minimize the chances of mistakes occurring. However, you can also encounter certain minor errors due to the variances that happen when you first measure for a part before measuring the cut line differently.
Measuring against the project
Measure against the project directly: if you are working on a project that involves one piece spanning between two additional pieces, all you need to do is to hold the spanning piece in the appropriate position and use a marking knife to mark the cut line.
You can also mark using a mechanical pencil. This is also applicable to joinery. You can pick up the piece that is supposed to mate with another piece to mark the depths and width of rabbets, dados, and help lap joints.
Conclusion
While measuring mistakes cannot be completely avoided, there are steps you can take to minimize these mistakes. When working on more complicated projects as a beginner, you will experience more of these mistakes, but as you gain more experience with time and regular practice, the mistakes will become less frequent.
If you have been paying attention to every detail from the beginning of these measuring tips and tricks for carpentry post up to this moment, you can easily avoid these common measuring mistakes and always come out with perfect woodworks.
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