Mystery Tape Measure Markings

This might be kind of scary to think about but I just may know more than many of you about these tapes watch the rest of this video we can fix that there's probably a lot of you out there that know about the one foot marks the sixteen inch on center marks and even the 24 inch on center marks but a whole lot of you keep asking about these little diamonds and really all of them do the same thing only in different ways.

While all modern measuring tapes will have all of these markings some of them use a little different format this is my favorite measuring tape it's got all the standard markings but if you notice the bottom scale is exactly twice of the top scale let's say we have a board that measures 20 inches wide on a top scale look on a bottom scale and find 20 inches there and that tells us exactly where the center is even I can figure out round numbers like this.

But it's when he run into fractions or odd measurements that that bottom scale really comes in handy on this tape the red box surrounds the number every 16 inches this is the most common separation for studs and most home type projects leave this tape on the sill plate and you can go down the entire wall making marks with the center of each stud the 24 inch markers can be used for stud separations on smaller buildings like garden sheds.

The type of building has a very low weight load on the studs and then there's the black diamond markers that are actually in between at 24 and 16 inch marks where snow loading is a concern to black diamonds law you to space 5 rafters beneath each eight-foot sheet of plywood to give you a better visual idea of what these markings do we're gonna lay out the studs in an 8-foot wall I'll start with the 16 inch on centers 16 inch centers is by far the most common stud arrangement.

This stud spacing can carry considerable loads and it's most frequently required by building codes and with the 16 inch centers we wind up with seven studs in an 8-foot long wall next I'll place a block by each of the black diamonds within that same 8-foot space as we'll see in a minute this allows us to put an extra rafter under each 8-foot sheet of plywood.

I know this doesn't seem like much but when you shorten up that span under snow loads it can be very important and lastly we'll lay out another wall on 24-inch centers which is the weakest of the three and with this spacing we save another stud for every eight feet of wall here again we're not saving a whole lot of money and most building calls don't allow this spacing .

It's most commonly used in sheds where we're not buying a whole lot of studs to start with and there you go that's what all those marks on the tape measures are all about and now when it comes to tape measures you know as much as I do and I'm trying to catch up on everything else..