TIL my framer can eyeball a 12/12 pitch better than my digital level

We were setting rafters on a custom shed last Tuesday in Austin, and my digital level kept giving me weird readings cause of the humidity. My lead framer, Dave, just looked at the roof line for 2 seconds and said "that's off by a quarter inch." He was dead right when I double checked with a manual square. Saved me 30 minutes of fiddling with batteries and recalibration. Anyone else have an old school guy on site who makes your high tech stuff look useless?

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kevin_carr4mo ago

You mentioned Dave eyeballing it in 2 seconds, but here's something nobody brings up - that skill only works when you've got the right context to look at. A digital level can actually be more accurate on a cloudy day with no shadows to reference. I've seen old timers get fooled by lighting and shadows casting weird lines on the roof deck, especially with dark standing seam metal up there. Does Dave ever talk about how the time of day or cloud cover changes what he trusts his eyes on?

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gavins434mo ago

Ditch the digital level and get yourself a good old fashioned string line and torpedo level. Those batteries always die at the worst time and the sensors get thrown off by a little sweat or humidity. Dave's got the real skill that comes from cutting rafters for 20 years before smartphones existed. I've seen guys like him eyeball a hip jack rafter in the rain and nail it within a sixteenth. Tech is great until it isn't, then you're standing there like a dope while the old timer already has the rafters set.

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