How to Use a Measuring Tape

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Nigel Gregory, with Blue Griffin Handyman. Today we're going to show you how to use a tape measure, and the different types of tape measures out there. There's, they come in different lengths and different sizes. We have thirty feet and twenty five, sixteen, and each face of the tape has a different setup. Some just have the numbers on them, the different units of measure, going in in inches and fractions of an inch. Some of them will actually, like this model here will actually put the different types of fractions on there, one eighth, one fourth, three eighths, half inch. Some of them even have large numbers on them in case you have a hard time seeing the numbers on there. But again, the the fractions aren't on this one. A friend of mine likes to use one with the fractions, cause he's not very good with them. But how you use it is you want to take it, and they have different mechanisms for locking too, like this one has a slide action, and this one has where you press to release the tape, and then you have a button to lock it, in case you want to leave it sticking out. Now, when you're using the tape measure, you want to place it, make sure that the the lip; there's a lip on the end of it here, you want to make sure it's on the end of the, of the wood, and and securely. So, and you can either hold it with your finger, or you can use the, make sure that it's taut. And then you want to find where; what it is you want to measure; like, say we wanted to do a foot, and mark on the piece of wood or material that you're using, and in most cases you're never going to use anything that's less than a eighth of an inch. In some cases you're going to use, for cabinetry for instance; you might want to get to a sixteenth or even a thirty secondth, but for the most part, an eighth of an inch will do for most applications. And that's how you use a tape measure."