Tread Gauge as a Template
An adjustable gauge that captures a space's true width and end angles — stair treads, alcove shelves — so the piece fits the first time.
Fit Stair Treads Exactly With Four Story Sticks — No Tape Measure
Two pairs of overlapped sticks — one pair spanning the width, one riding each skirt — extend to touch the walls, get clamped at their overlaps, and carry the tread's exact length and end angles back to the stock. A technique to watch more than read.
measure between two walls, inside measurements without a tape, transfer odd angles, cut treads to fit crooked walls
The Problem
A stair tread has to land tight between two skirts or walls that are never parallel and never square. Measuring that with a tape means capturing a length and two angles from a cramped position — and every tread is different. Cut to numbers and you're scribing and shaving each one anyway.
The Technique
Story sticks (pinch sticks) capture the space directly instead of translating it through numbers:
- Make four sticks — two pairs. Each pair overlaps and slides against itself to extend.
- Set one pair across the tread space and slide it out until each end touches its wall exactly where the tread's nosing line will sit. Clamp the overlap — the pair now is the length, angles included when a stick rides along each skirt.
- Lay the locked sticks on the tread stock and transfer the ends directly — no numbers ever existed to misread.
- Cut to the transferred marks and the tread drops in tight, wall to wall.
The maneuvering of the four sticks is genuinely one to watch rather than read — the source video shows the whole capture in a few seconds.
Pro tip: Pinch sticks beat the tape anywhere two out-of-parallel surfaces trap a workpiece — closet shelves, window stools, built-in bottoms. Two sticks and a clamp are the whole tool, and they're never wrong by a sixteenth the way a bent tape is.
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