New construction workers typically want to be productive and start their new skills as soon as possible. The usual instinct is to get the work done, and start cutting, fastening, and fitting. This is understandable because these activities show that work is being done and progress is being made. But these are also the most likely stages to be harmed by inaccurate measuring and marking, if not addressed early in the learning process. The tape measure and the saw can make perfect cuts that are simply wrong; a joint that looks great and sits flush is also prone to falling out of square if there was a measuring or marking error.
Because this is the case, beginners should focus on developing their ability to measure and mark before trying to cut or assemble. These are not simple exercises that can be glossed over or rushed. Learning to do these tasks right the first time requires slow, focused practice. It will save much more in materials and frustration later on. It might also keep you from getting used to doing these tasks in a way that might not seem like a good habit but becomes the most efficient way to do things and is also wrong.
To be effective, measuring has to be more than just reading what is on the tape measure and transferring this number to the work piece with a pencil. This can become a routine that must be done in exactly the same way each time you measure and mark a piece. That means always holding the tape measure in the correct position to measure what you want, making sure you have the same position for reading the number, and using the same position for marking the measurement on the wood.
A lot of new construction workers fall into the habit of measuring a line and looking away for an instant or two, and then coming back and marking the line at whatever they remember the measurement to be. This means that the tape measure can easily slide a little, and even if the number remembered is correct, the line can be placed wrong, making the measurement inaccurate. This problem is not hard to avoid. By always keeping the tape measure in the same place for marking the line with the tape measure being the reference for that number being read, and never shifting position between measuring and marking, the measuring process becomes consistent and reliable. This also makes it easy to mark the waste side, and leave it there so it will be easy to know where the cut should be. This is an excellent habit because it does not involve memory, and the mark on the waste side will remain until the cut is made.
To practice this, get a tape measure and square and use the two to mark ten points across the board using different measurements. Do not cut yet. The point of this is just to see how well the markings can be checked for accuracy and readability, by looking at how cleanly the lines are drawn and how easily they can be verified with the square and tape measure. This means that even if one line tilts even slightly, you must still learn to notice this, and correct the cause of the problem. Is the square loose, or is the pencil point too dull to make a good mark, or maybe the edge of the wood is uneven, making it hard to set the square squarely on it? If so, these things should be corrected. In this manner, you will be doing ten measurements that you really do understand how accurate they really are, rather than measuring and marking ten pieces quickly, without being certain what the accuracy is.
Another common mistake of beginners is to mark the piece of wood for a cut without taking a moment to decide whether it will be the finished piece or the waste piece. To be a good measure and mark worker, the measurement and marks have to make sense to be cut into the right size or be a little bit bigger or smaller, so that when all the pieces are together, the finished work piece is the exact size it needs to be. The reason for this is that if any of these decisions are not made, then the pieces cut to these sizes will be a little bit off. These little mistakes can become a lot bigger if more pieces of work are cut to those inaccurate sizes.
When you find the measurement and marks to be in need of a decision, take a moment before the tape measure and pencil come apart to decide which side of the mark will be the piece of wood to throw away. You can say this quietly as you point at the waste side, which will help you keep to yourself what you are doing. It does not hurt to be consistent and say it each time you make a measurement or mark a piece of wood to be cut. If you do not do this now, you will not be thinking about which side will be cut when you get to the cutting phase of construction work. You need to think about it then because every measurement made needs to be accurate or the layout of the entire project will be messed up, which means everything has to be rebuilt.
