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Some interesting features of tape measures......

good stuff Odie........several things I did not know......some people carry a pocket knife...some people carry a measuring tape.....some people carry both......airlines security will not take your measuring tape
 
Hmm, never seen the serrated teeth tip on the tapes. Always just used the tongue of the tip which left enough. I do prefer the ones that you pull and they lock automatically, then you have to press the release to get it to come back into the inside. Many years of construction... On the concrete job, they would last a month or two. In the shop, I have one that is maybe 20 years old...

robo hippy
 
Some tape measures now feature a rare earth magnet on the end of the tape which is really nice when measuring
around metallic materials. A steel thumb tack can be used on non-metallic surfaces to provide a surface to adhere
the end of the tape measure to. Always nice to have that extra "hand" feature on a tool so a person can easily use
it without having another person around to perform the task.
 
My collection of tape measures includes:

Black & Decker AutoTape - Power advance and return, Imperial and metric. 4 - AAA batteries.

US Tape Company CenterPoint - full inches and half-scale (i.e., e.g. 12" adjacent to 24") to immediately locate the mid-point of a measurement. (Imperial only).

Stanley Diameter Scale - full inches on the front, and enlarged "inches" on the back which measure 3.1416". Wrap the object and read the diameter by actually measuring the circumference. I think this is the basis for hat sizes BTW.


Most tape measures have diamond marks at about 19.2" intervals - provides 5 spaces in an 8-foot sheet of plywood. Used for truss layouts.
 
odie said:
Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway........😀

View: https://youtu.be/TkoCWUJt10w
Click to expand...
where can I get a left handed tape.. I am righthanded, I hold a tape in my left hand, hook the end on the right hand edge of the board, pull the tape body to the left, pencil in my right hand ready to mark the distance I want but the numbers are upside down. Do they make a tape with the numbers right side up? JIM
 
The video was interesting, but it also had some errors. I have at least a half dozen tapes of various brands and none of them have serrated teeth. I think tht was a made-up story. Also not all of them have hooks that slide and none of mine are "missing exactly 1/16" off the end". On the ones that have sliding hooks, the amount of movement is NOT 1/16", it is approximately the same as the thickness of the hook which averaged about 0.035" for all of the ones that I measured. The reason that the hooks slide is to to compensate for the width of the hook when hooking over an edge vs. butting against a corner. Using the plastic )or metal( housing of the rule to measure the inside of something like the inside dimensions of the framing to hang a door or a window is OK if you are a carpenter, but for woodworking a straightedge is much better. Measurements are especially sloppy if hooking on a nail or screw head, but good enough if setting the forms for a slab. Not so good for trim carpentry.
 
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