Shoutout to the old school guy who showed me the right way to set a rail

I was on a job in Cincinnati last year, and the crew was using laser levels for every single rail alignment. It was slow, and we kept having to recheck the floor plates. An older mechanic pulled me aside and had me try his method with a tight string line and a 6 foot level. We got three rails perfectly plumb in under two hours, something that took all morning with the laser. The string doesn't lie and you can feel the tension change if something shifts. Has anyone else found that some new tools just overcomplicate a simple job?

4 comments

4 Comments

simonk982mo ago

So what's the trick for keeping the string tight, @logan_wood?

miles_robinson2021d ago

Man, "the string doesn't lie" - I love that. Had almost the exact same thing happen on a job in St. Louis. Crew was using digital levels and a total station to plumb a set of columns and spent half a day fighting with calibration errors. My foreman ran a string from the top to the bottom and had us use a 4 foot level. Done in two hours. @logan_wood is spot on - that new tech just adds extra steps you don't need. A good tight string and a bubble level hasn't changed in 100 years because it works.

jenny_lane122mo ago

My buddy had a similar thing happen on a commercial site. They were using some fancy digital angle finder to set pipe supports, but the readings kept jumping around. A retired fitter told him to just use a basic torpedo level and a speed square. They finished the whole rack a day early.

logan_wood2mo ago

That's just how it goes with tech sometimes. It adds steps instead of cutting them, like when a simple app update makes everything harder to find. The old way often works because it's already been figured out.