STORY

Measuring your wood before cutting it is easier to do with the perfect line. Sometimes we can get away with a quick drawing across and quickly cutting the wood if the end does not matter.

Here is a simple way to measure the wood you are cutting using a square layout tool to guide you on marking a straight line before cutting the wood.

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Depending if the wood is pressure treated or pine will determine if you use a black marker or simply a jumbo pencil to mark your lines. On this particular project I was in fact using fresh pressure treated wood which was a bit wet at the time and so the jumbo pencil did not really work well and so I decided to use the black marker instead.

For me as a handyman is easier to cut right away with the perfect line made before I do cut than trying to mark quickly and then jumping into a cut. One you may find that cutting it this way will not provide you a straight cut.

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If you are cutting at 10 feet and you mess up and your actual cut turned out to be 9 1/2 due to the wrong measurement then you wasted that piece of wood. it’s also very important that you use a tape measure too so that you get the mark right.

Guide your actual line with the square layout tool from that initial mark, connecting the top and the bottom with the tool then provides you a finish line; one cool thing about this particular tool is that I could use it from either side to connect the two line markings.