As my interest in woodworking became more serious I discovered a television show called The New Yankee Workshop. The show is hosted by Norm Abram, who is more commonly seen on This Old House Classics on HGTV. Watching Norm make furniture and other projects week after week was inspiring. I began to build simple projects using many techniques I had learned watching Norm. When I measured a board to make a cut, I used a tape measure, just like Norm.

As the complexity of my projects increased I began to discover that I was making errors in measurement. Being off just a little didn’t matter in simple projects, but in more complex projects, each inaccuracy added to the previous ones and resulted in serious problems. As I searched for a way to resolve this problem, I learned of an altogether different measurement technique.

Master woodworkers often use a story stick to measure the various components of their projects. Stonemasons have used story sticks for centuries and it seems likely that the idea has its roots in ancient Egypt.

A story stick is a simple wooden stick with marks scribed across its width to represent an object’s various sizes and characteristics. Since an object has height, width, and depth, the measurements for each dimension can be represented using three of the four surfaces of the stick.

Story sticks have distinct advantages over tape measures when creating furniture. The ability to read a tape measure is not required. There is substantially less opportunity for misreading a measurement. The measurements are more exact since they came from a copy of the actual object or a plan and were carefully verified. Story sticks are a very efficient way to ensure a quality result.