Changed my mind about laser levels after a 6 hour job in Denver
I used to swear by my bubble levels, figured lasers were just for guys who couldn't read a vial. Then last month we were setting a line of steel supports in a warehouse in Denver and the layout was off by almost a half inch every 20 feet. The old timer on the crew, Mike, handed me his green laser and made me check my marks. Turns out the bubble was fine but the humidity was warping the layout string just enough to throw everything. That laser caught the drift right away and we redid the marks in under an hour. Now I'm thinking about grabbing one for my own kit, but I'm not sold on which brand yet. Any of you guys run a laser for rough layout or is that overkill for most boiler work?
The humidity warping the string part really got me. That kind of thing happens way more than people want to admit, not just in Denver either. Same deal with my tape measure on a hot day, it stretches and you swear you measured right. Small errors stack up until the whole job is off and you're blaming your math instead of your tools. Feels like half of getting older is just realizing the stuff you trusted was fine all along until it wasn't.