failure of an old friend

  Sitting on my chair in our living room is an old friend of at least 30 years. I bought this square as an aid to building a shop/studio in the back yard of my parents home, in the early 80's.  That shop remains my biggest project and probably the one that taught me the most lessons.


  That square has followed me from place to place and been used countless times over the years.  I don't know when it began to go out of square, it has been slowly happening for many years I suspect.  I do not remember it being dropped or twisted or abused and so it must have just slowly twisted a bit at a time until now.......it is not square.  So it is not a square, by just  a little bit, probably not enough that it would be noticed when working with construction grade lumber, probably not that far out of square that it would be noticeable on narrow boards.  It is about 1/8 inch out at the end of the long side. An eighth in 24 inches isn't much over the first 4 or 5 inches, but it really showed up on 18 inch shelves.


   Now it is apparent why the last set of book cases posed challenges that I did not expect. I was working carefully, but with an un-square, square. 


   When was the last time that you checked your square to see if it is right on 90 degrees? 


   The happy ending to the story, has evening I got my center punch, hammer and patience and tuned the square.  An advantage of a steel square, it can be trued.