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Pro tip: my grandpa said to never trust a level you didn't drop yourself

He was a cabinet maker for 40 years and said that with a straight face. I was helping a friend frame a shed in his backyard last weekend and grabbed his brand new 4-foot level off the shelf. I checked a top plate and it looked perfect, so we nailed it in. When we went to hang the first rafter, nothing lined up. We pulled out my old beat-up Stanley level and sure enough, his new one was off by almost a full bubble over the length. The thing was dead out of the box. We had to pull all the nails and redo it, which cost us about two hours. Has anyone else had a new tool be that wrong right from the start? What's your go-to method for checking a level's accuracy before you trust it on a job?
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3 Comments
the_mason
the_mason3d ago
A full bubble over 4 feet is crazy. Did your friend's level have any obvious damage to the vials, or was it just a bad factory calibration?
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julia843
julia8431mo agoMost Upvoted
Wait, a full bubble off brand new?
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wendy674
wendy6741mo ago
Yeah, I saw that same deal and almost choked on my coffee.
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