Adam Cohen writes:
Inspiration for your blog readers:
“Making accurate measurements is one of the most important skills to acquire if you want to achieve good results.” p. 7, The Complete Practical Woodworker
We should all strive to be like woodworkers. At the very least they might make good social science researchers.
My grandfather was a master carpenter who passed when I was a preteen.
But one thing is did tell me was always measure more than once, then make the cut 1/2 or 1 inch longer. Then trim to fit, and this was back when only handsaws were available.
So do many slightly different analyses and make less claims than those analysis might support. Then refine in these with those who review your work.
As a carpenter in my early years, I relied on another technique: Always remember to put the wood stretcher in your toolbox (along with the sky hook and the left-handed hammer).
Accurate measurements are important, but you also need to measure the right thing in the right place.
I agree.
In some sciences there are very precise measurements that get translated into a completely different dependent variable from the one measured. Usually, it goes from more specific to rather general.
In medicine/biology, we often hear about certain bio-markers, measured precisely. Later on it is interpreted as a ‘disease risk’, etc. Anything in cell biology is similar, as very good tools are available to ‘see’ what is happening in a single cell. However, a relative influence of a single cell operation or a synergistic effect of 37 trillion cells are conveniently ignored, when the results are presented. It is tempting to use it for something relatable to our scale and that usually means a huge leap.
Whenever possible I like to let things measure themselves. If I have an item that needs to fit on a board I lay the item on the board to decide where to cut. That minimizes the chance of error from the multistep / measure the item / remember the measurement / measure the board.
I’m not sure how this is relevant in the current discussion. Perhaps it’s an argument for avoiding a proxy when you can measure directly.
I agree. I’d also say that I use my sense of touch to verify that that two boards are equal dimension. In fact, I think that measurement with a tape measure is more for rough dimensioning of lumber.
It seems no matter how carefully you measure, knotty problems remain and require workarounds.
Also from my years as a carpenter: All measurements are wrong. They’re estimates and approximations within certain ranges of error tolerance and confidence intervals.
Sometimes they’re useful.
Thorndike’s Credo:
“All that exists, exists in some amount and can be measured.” (1918)
Thorndike’s Fallacy: All that can be measured exixts.
A better bit of advice about woodworking is that it is risky to put much trust in anything you read about it.
When woodworkers want to be precise, they don’t measure, or at least don’t describe what they do as “measuring.” Instead, they trim parts to fit. Now, certainly, feeling the force you need to insert a tenon into a mortise is a type of measurement, and perhaps a good measurement of the relative sizes.
But that is not what they are talking about on page 7 of The Complete Practical Woodworker. They haven’t even told you how much the size of your board is likely to change when you bring it indoors.