My square was lying to me for 2 years, found out on a deck job in March

I've been framing for about 6 years and always trusted my old framing square without question. Last month on a deck rebuild in Tacoma, I kept getting corners that were just slightly off, maybe a 1/8 inch gap on the diagonal no matter how careful I was. A guy I was working with borrowed my square to mark a rafter and handed it back with a look, said "you know this thing's dinged on the lip, right?" Sure enough, there was a small nick on the inside edge I'd never noticed because I always used the outside face. I checked it against a level and a straightedge and it was out by almost 3 degrees at the corner. All those slightly crooked cabinets and door frames I blamed on old lumber or my own tired eyes were probably just this dumb square. Have any of you found a tool failure that you mistook for your own screw-up for way too long?

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jenniferb532mo ago

Man, that hits close to home. I had a level for years that had a tiny bubble shift somehow, maybe it got dropped on a job and I never caught it. I redid a whole custom cabinet install twice because I could not get the faces plumb, and I blamed the walls and the old house the whole time. Finally grabbed a brand new level for a different project and checked the old one against it. It was off by a full vial width. Two years of my work was leaning just enough to bug me, and I thought I was losing my touch. Now I check every tool against something I trust more, and honestly a cheap square or a new level is worth the peace of mind. Take this with a grain of salt, but a dinged edge or a shifted bubble can mess with your head more than your work.

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