My $7 plastic triangle ruler saved me an hour on a door jamb layout

I was laying out a new door jamb for a commercial job last Thursday and kept messing up the 45 degree angles on the stop. I grabbed my cheap plastic triangle ruler from the supply cabinet instead of the fancy metal one I usually use and it matched the existing cut perfectly on the first try. Turns out the metal one had a slight warp from being tossed around in my bag for months. Has anyone else had a tool that was basically junk until it suddenly worked better than the expensive version?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer_owens5822d agoMost Upvoted

The whole "saved me an hour" thing sounds a bit dramatic. A 45 degree cut on a door stop isn't exactly rocket surgery. If your metal square was warped that bad, you probably would've noticed it earlier when it didn't line up with anything else. But I guess if it worked, it worked. Just seems like a lot of hype over a basic layout mistake.

oliverhernandez22d ago

Flip it around and think about the opposite problem. That warped metal square probably made you double check your layout on every other job for months without you knowing it. You got real good at compensating for bad angles without even realizing, like driving a car with the alignment off. Then the plastic one showed you what a real 45 looked like and your muscle memory kicked in perfect. Kinda like how a cheap backup mic picks up cleaner vocals than your main one because it doesn't have that built up dust or whatever. Sometimes the beat up stuff teaches you better than the fancy gear.

nancyj1122d ago

Wait, are we really gonna sit here and act like a piece of warped metal secretly taught a guy better angles? @oliverhernandez that's a pretty story, but come on. If his metal square was bent that bad, every layout he did for months would've been off by a hair, not just magically fixing itself when he switched plastic. He'd have caught it on the first couple cuts because nothing would've squared up right on site. And if he was actually compensating for bad angles without knowing it, that doesn't make him a better worker, it just means he was guessing right by luck. The plastic ruler saved him time because it was accidentally precise, not because he suddenly tapped into some hidden skill. Honestly, the real lesson is probably that he should've checked his metal square way earlier instead of assuming it was fine.