My friend Steve stopped by and we talked about the deck. He suggested I ignore everything I see and focus simply on what was straight. When I told him I was not sure how to confirm what was straight, he told me to simply pull a string across the joist. I did and discovered part of my problem was that the joist itself had a bend in it.
in the photo above, you may be able to see how the string is tight against the end of the joist, has a half inch space towards the middle, and then touches the other end. This confirmed the fact our joist itself was not straight and was only leading to confusion regarding what is square.
Fortunately there's a simple solution for that! All I had to do was use my favorite tool, a combination square. Here is what I did....
Step one, figure out what I think the shortest board is. In my case, this will define where all the other boards need to be cut to.
Step two, determine how far away this point is from the string I pulled earlier.
Step three, add one and 1/4 inches to the measurement since that is the distance between my saw blade and the guide on my circular saw.
Step four, Mark a point on each board that represents this distance. By doing so, I have calculated where I need to make each cut.
So I started off cutting boards one at a time using this strategy. I was using my carpenter square to serve as a fence for my circular saw to keep the cut straight. I was also relying upon each board needing to be cut at a perfect 90°, which the carpenter square allowed me to do.
After four boards, I began to notice I was 1/32 of an inch off of where I thought I should be next to the string line. I discovered each board in my deck is probably 0.5 degree off from perfectly square from the joist. I also know the joist isn't square, so everything was wacky. I knew this would be a problem if I followed the line over 18 ft so I had to come up with a different plan.
I then switched to a large metal right angle that I acquired from the Correa Middle School wood shop class when it closed over 30 years ago. I basically measured the front and back of the angle to get it at the appropriate distance from my string line. This allowed me to cut three boards at a time which was an improvement over the one board at a time strategy with the carpenter square.
My buddy Ryan came over and saw my dilemma. He mentioned he had an 8-ft long piece of straight aluminum that he used to measure the rocker on surfboards. He let me borrow that. I followed the same strategy and was able to cut nine boards without resetting which dramatically cut down my level of error. This was a way better strategy because it was faster and provided more accuracy over distance.
Basically, using a carpenter square is great if you only need to go straight for about 10 in, but I needed to go straight for 18 ft and that's a whole nother ball of wax when it comes to accuracy.
Today was a success and I owe a lot of it to my friend Ryan and Steve.
On an unrelated note, Michelle and I attended our first mentor orientation meeting at Claremont high School. Michelle and I serve as mentors for a group of 11th grade students. While there, we visited the presidential museum. A teacher at the school has been collecting memorabilia and has artifacts going all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. Apparently the museum itself is nationally known. He even has signed photographs from President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. See if you can pick up on the dry humor the teacher has from the photo below.