Marks on a Stick

use the ruler once, then put it away

joined stool story sticks

I forget how it happened, but I was searching back for something on my old blog and ran into a comment that got away from me - I wish I could remember where it was and who it was from - but I know it was someone with a metric ruler. The gist of their comment/question was they struggled with my inches and feet and couldn’t even begin to understand how I built things based on “marks on a stick.” Well, proverbial dear reader, if you’re out there - sorry I didn’t get back to you, but here goes.

The “marks on a stick” - sometimes called “story sticks” are as old as dirt I imagine. I forget where I learned about them, my guess is Jennie Alexander. I do remember seeing references to them based on finish carpentry in a modern setting. Some record all the locations and details about construction of a piece of furniture - a JA chair for example. In the 3rd edition of Alexander’s book Make a Chair from a Tree is the “chair stick” - including marks for laying out the tangent lines that designate where you bore the mortises, tapers in the posts’ thickness and the upper and lower limits of the slat mortises. There is also a mark on there for where the flat relief begins on the rear post - which happens to be the height of the finished front post. (but I never use the stick to trim that post - that happens after assembly.)