Reply To: How square should a square be?
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I know I’m reviving very old thread. Two months ago I started my adventure with woodworking. One of the tools I bought was – yep you guessed right – a combi square made by Draper. It was an only piece in the shop, so I didn’t have much choice. Of course at home when i tried to do four face line on the piece, the line from the first and fourth faces didn’t met. So I purchased Stanley combi square from Amazon (yep, here in Irish Wild West we don’t have fancy tools in shops) – exactly . Happy that finally have a perfect tool, went back to work. The error this time was even bigger and checking the square unearthed few issues:
– faces are not flat, but concave
– ruler is not straight, it literally produces waves if you want to draw a line
– the square error at the end is a little under 5 mm.
– the second day of use, locking nut just stuck. It can be removed with excessive force
So I asked Amazon for replacement. This time the square error is just about 3 millimeters (still worse than Draper), and the slit where the ruler sits is just too wide so you cannot lock the ruler parallel to the axis of symmetry of the sole. Ruler itself is fine.
I doubt Amazon will agree to replace it the next time so my idea is to build one square from those two, but to do this – is there any manual how to do this properly? Stanleys don’t have those small nibs that Draper does, so square correction will be probably a little more difficult.
PS: Draper square after just few strokes of the file is now perfectly square. What’s going on, Stanley?