5 Amazing Hidden Features in Tape Measures

welcome to our YouTube channel where we share our building wisdom or lack thereof with you the tape measure first thing about and you probably never thought about this is the shape of the metal itself is an arch just like how the Romans used arches to support bridges this arch supports the tape as it comes out making it a rigid rule but when you want to let it back in this arch doesn't have much strength in this direction watch this I can easily bend it this direction so when it rolls back around itself this way it becomes flexible to demonstrate this another way I've got my tape turned upside down so that the arch is facing up on this tape I'm pushing down with about 1015 pounds of force right there you'll notice that the tape is rigid does not break now we're going to flip it over now this is the opposite direction and I'm gonna put about ten pounds of force on it that was about one pound actually and it broke right there easily so that's a pretty amazing and ingenious way to design something so that you can have something rigid turn into something that's not rigid and roll up in here 25 30 40 feet that's just crazy if you think about it the engineering in this is more than you'd ever think so let's check out the technology we used before tape measures and that was a fold-out ruler now this thing is rigid no matter what you do - it's the only way to get it compact enough to put it in your pocket is to fold it up which is slow and also it only folds out to about six feet so obviously the tape measure is a much better tool thing about a tape measure that nobody really thinks about is how the end of this tape measure operates you'll see that it looks like it's loose it looks like this thing was defective when it was manufactured and that's because these holes around these pins are a little bigger than the actual pins now that's on purpose that's not an accident and that's so that when you but your tape into a material that slides back and makes up for about this sixteenth inch metal plate that you're using to but into but when you want a hook and pull the measurement this way this end will actually slide out due to this slack right here and it will make up the difference for this same thin sixteenth inch hook on this piece of metal so that you'll get the same measurement whether you hook or you but it'll give you the same number exactly that's awesome thank you for your assistance now I've got a little demonstration setup to show you the other trick that these hook ins have on tape measures and it has to do with this little slot that you see on the end let me show you what it does so I've got a nail set right here in this piece of wood sticking up a quarter-inch now I can take my tape measure and hook it over this nail and you'll notice if you look closely that the nail head is actually poking through this slot on the end of the tape measure here's another angle of that and I know it doesn't seem super impressive but let me tell you two reasons why it is an impressive feature and why it's super important to get accurate measurements number one is that you usually set the shaft of the nail not the head of the nail on your reference mark that you're trying to measure from so if you go to pull your tape measure and it butts on the head of the nail instead of the shaft of the nail you can see that I would be about 1/8 or 3/16 of an inch long on this measurement which is not good the other reason this is extremely important is that this nail hook keeps your tape from sliding off the nail left or right so if you take this tape and change angles or you're pulling up or down it stays put and it doesn't pop off so you don't have to keep coming back to the hook and move your tape and re hooking it wasting time on the job and for any of you guys that are new to construction if someone asks you to hand them the dumb end of the tape measure on a job that's what they mean this and if they want this smart end at the tape measure that means they're gonna take the measurement and that's this in the tape that I'm using today has one ingenious feature that most of them don't I'm going to demonstrate it right now this is a Milwaukee stud 25 and this has a spot where you would grip the tape naturally that you can use as a hand brake right there instead of having to lock the mechanism if you want to stop the tape from reeling back in just put your finger right there on that spot where your finger lands naturally anyway yes and sort of unknown feature about tape measures is that the actual tape box itself usually measures 3 inches you to run the tape out and bump the back of the tape box to the opposing wall and simply add 3 inches to your measurement to get a measurement where you can't bend the tape into a corner very easily done straight this we're gonna roll this tape across the hallway and bump it into the wall on the back of the tape read the scale 57 inches now we're just gonna add three inches to that this whole way is 60 inches wide so tape measures are laid out in two inches half inches quarter inches eighth inches and down to a sixteenth of an inch on most framing ones but the other ingenious thing about this layout is they're also subdivided into several other layouts that help you get your framing correct when you're building houses all of the red marks on this tape 16 32 48 are 16 inch on center layout and that's a common stud layout you'll also notice a diamond at nineteen point two inches in a diamond at about thirty eight and three-eighths inches now this is another layout that is nineteen point two inches on center this nineteen point two layout is most commonly used on floor trusses that are three and a half inches wide number on a tape measure is 8 foot that's where the 2 foot 16 inch and you see the diamond 19.2 centers all land on the same layout and it's like that every 8 foot down the length of the tape and that's no accident because a regular piece of shooting on a house measures 96 inches so a tape measure makes it simple easy to do layout when you're building houses by its design you just look for the red squares the black squares or the black triangles to mark your layouts so hopefully I didn't bore you guys to death with all that I find it really interesting because I use tape measures all the time all day so happy measuring to you measure twice and cut once [Music]

Channel: Perkins Builder Brothers

Views: 1,935,668

Keywords: how to, lessons, tutorial, building

Id: 53DmFmkUcag

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 30 2019