Took me 3 years to realize I was reading tape measures wrong for crown molding

I was cutting crown upside down and backwards on a compound miter saw for three years because some old guy at the shop told me to 'just flip it over.' Then I watched a video from a guy in Houston who showed me how to use the spring angle, and I felt like an idiot. Anyone else have a 'wait I've been doing it wrong this whole time' moment with a basic tool?

3 comments

3 Comments

alicehernandez1d ago

Took me 3 years to realize I was reading tape measures wrong" - that's a special kind of pain right there. I spent a whole summer building a deck where every single board was cut to the center of the pencil line instead of the edge, so all my gaps were off by a sixteenth. Felt like a REAL genius when I figured that out at 11pm on a Friday. But hey, at least you didn't have to rip out a whole crown molding job where every corner was gaping like a smile because you measured the spring angle wrong.

beth_reed1d ago

Wait, I gotta call you out on one thing - you don't rip out crown molding, you pull it off. Ripping is cutting with the grain. Sorry, had to say it, that one got me. Did you end up having to redo the whole thing?

dianahayes1d ago

Nothing like discovering you've been using the world's most generous pencil line for three years. Bet that deck looked real interesting from above with all those gaps. Guess that's one way to get built-in drainage.