A Modern-Day Story (Stick)
By Benjamen Johnson
You’ve heard the expression “measure twice, cut once.” Ages ago, woodworkers found transferring all their project’s important measurements to a story stick helped them avoid measurement errors. When it came time to mark project pieces, they just placed the story stick next to the piece and transferred the mark. Today, Woodpeckers makes a device that improves upon the story stick in several ways.
Unlike just any old piece of wood from your shop, the 36″ story stick’s aluminum track runs straight as a rail. On one side they engrave a scale with 1/32” increments in both directions, so you can use it either left-to-right or right-to-left. On the other side they engrave a centering scale. Four steel tabs slide along the track and lock into place with the turn of a knob, with both a pencil slot and a V-notch in each tab to make transferring measurements dead-on accurate.
Each tab features a window with an alignment notch, making it easy to position the tab at the correct point on the scale. And so you don’t have to try to align the ends, the end stop clips over the end of the piece you’re marking.
This made-in-the-USA story stick runs about $35 at Amazon or Woodpeckers. An extra set of four tabs runs $13. Woodcraft also offers a similar story stick from Pinnacle for $35.
Story Stick [Woodpeckers]
Via Amazon(B0013KTAUW) [What’s This?] [What's This?]
Pinnacle Story Stick [Woodcraft]
March 7th, 2008 at 11:57 am
We like story sticks for helping us set complicated cabinet arrangements. A 36 inch one - is just too short for this.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Yeah, I thought that 36″ was a little short for a lot of uses, but I think it’s an interesting idea none-the-less.