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I finally stopped trusting my tape measure for face frames and a guy in Fresno showed me why
I was building a 12 foot run of upper cabinets in my shop two weeks ago and every face frame came out 1/16 to 3/32 out of square at the corners. I kept blaming my miter saw and re-cut the stiles twice, then a cabinet guy from Fresno who was picking up some maple asked me why I was measuring off the tape instead of using a story stick. He grabbed a scrap of 1/4 ply and marked every rail and stile position right off the carcass in about 90 seconds. I tried it on the next two frames and they fit dead on with no shimming. My tape has been dropped so many times the hook is bent and I never checked it against a known 12 inch rule. Now I want to know how many of you still measure face frames with a tape and if you ever check the hook for slop.
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xena_miller311mo ago
Ha, hold on, the story stick is the right call but it doesn't fix a bent hook by itself. A story stick just copies the carcass, so if your tape is off, your marks on the stick are still coming off that same bad tape unless you marked straight off the wood like he did. The real lesson there is skip the tape and mark direct, and yeah, check that hook against a ruler every few months, mine was off almost 1/8 and I had no clue.
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