Update: I keep seeing new guys in Denver skip the layout pencil and go straight to the saw.

My old boss in Michigan would dock you an hour's pay if you didn't mark every cut with a sharp pencil first, because eyeballing it leads to a quarter-inch gap that you'll be fixing for free on Saturday.

3 comments

3 Comments

derekward5d ago

Trained a new guy who kept rushing cuts. Made him measure and mark a whole stack of two-by-fours, then cut them. Every piece that was off by more than an eighth, he had to redo from a fresh board on his own time. After wasting three studs, he finally slowed down. The pencil isn't about lack of skill, it's about proving you did the thinking before the saw even turns on.

ellis.hayden5d ago

Speed is money on a job site. A good eye and a steady hand with the saw can beat a pencil mark any day, especially with modern tools. That quarter-inch gap story sounds like a training problem, not a layout problem.

xena3735d ago

Okay but "a good eye" is a skill that takes years to build, and you're assuming everyone on the crew has it. Modern tools still need a human to tell them where to cut. If the guy setting the saw doesn't know the layout, you're just cutting the wrong length faster. That quarter inch gap is a system problem, not just one person being bad. It means the info from the plan to the finished piece got lost somewhere, and that's on the whole process.