Pro Carpenter Standard Reverse 16/25 Foot Tape Measure

Buy Here for $10.50

Good carpentry requires that the accuracy of your cuts be within a tolerance of 1/16” of an inch. My wonderful timber framing teacher used to famously say that “perfect was good enough”. Given the importance of accuracy in measuring, it is hard to believe how illegible and unfriendly the layouts of most tape measures are. 

Squinting at the tape, you find yourself struggling to decipher what one very small tick after a slightly larger tick after an even larger ¾” tick mark means. And if you can’t quickly recognize that morse-code of ticks to be 15/16ths of an inch, trying to then transcribe that measurement onto the board you are about to cut becomes very hard. 

I love and use this tape more than any other because of how easy it is to read. Every 1/16th denomination of each inch is marked on both sides of the tape, facilitating readability no matter what orientation your tape is. Better still, when I am working with my partner who also uses this tape, it is easy to call out a measurement like 8 5/16ths and have them quickly and easily pull out their tape and make an exact mark at that measurement, and then cut the board at exactly 8 5/16”! 

The other earth shattering improvement to the standard tape measure, which I’m amazed took so long to develop, is that one side of this tape has a wipeable surface to write measurements on AND AND it has a built in pencil sharpener in order to keep your point sharp. Wow, right? I mean these are simple but major improvements on the singularly most important tool in carpentry. 

If you have a carpentry project coming up, I highly recommend buying this tape; and if you know you are going to work with someone or require a helper for your project, it's a lovely idea to buy two tapes and give to them one as a gift. 

This tape comes in 16 ft. or 25 ft. lengths. I would just buy the 25’ length and you will never be in need of a longer tape.