Measure once...

There's an old saying, "measure twice, cut once." (Or, measure three times, depending...)

But as I was taking measurements for the built in job (which is now fully completed... finally!) I used a sliding bar gauge. Basically, it's a kit that I bought with two collars to hold two wooden bars next to each other, and they slide past each other. Then draw a pen line where one bar overlaps the other. It's a quick way of taking a physical measurement without numbers, and it's surprisingly accurate, and incredibly simple: Loosen the thumb bolt that clamps the bars together, and slide them past each other until the alignment marks line up. It can be a little too simple, sometimes, as there aren't any numbers involved, and once in a while, shop work does require math. But the measure twice rule makes sense because sometimes people read the numbers wrong, for whatever reason. No numbers to screw up with this method... until you measure it at the shop, anyway.

But, the point of the post, I've read various methods for taking notes on site. But in this case I simply made a couple of dedicated bars to go with the gauge setup, and I have to say, I'm impressed at how well it worked out, and how much I was able to scribble on it in the way of notes as I went along... (you'll need to click on the picture to see that I actually wrote on the thing) so it ended up as sort of a combination measuring device/ notebook.

It still amazes me sometimes, how well the simple methods work.