Watched an old timer scribe a stair stringer without a calculator at a job site in Cleveland back in 2017

He just used a framing square and a pencil, nailed it on the first cut, and I've never pulled out a calculator for stairs since then, how do you guys handle tricky layouts without relying on digital stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaretw4112d ago

And honestly that's the thing, people forget how much muscle memory and feel play into layout work. Once you do enough cuts with a framing square you just start seeing the numbers without reading them off a scale. It's like your hands know the 17 inch rise and 11 inch run before your brain even catches up.

baker.ben12d ago

You're dead on @margaretw41. For me it was learning to trust the step-out method for stringers instead of second guessing myself with math every time. After the first dozen or so stair builds I stopped needing to double check the numbers on the square, my fingers just found the right marks on their own. That muscle memory thing is real weird when you first notice it happening though, like your body picked up a skill while your brain was still trying to catch up. It's one of those things that makes old timers look like wizards on site when really they just let their hands do the thinking for them.

cole_robinson10d ago

Wait hold on. Your fingers just knew the 17 inch rise and 11 inch run without looking at the square? That's wild. I've done a lot of stairs and my brain still has to check the numbers at least once.