On the advice of an experienced carpenter, I made a simple device for quickly marking the board in half

In carpentry, as well as during repair or construction, there are times when it is necessary to make a marking along a board (bar), dividing it in half, or to find its center at several points at once.

Usually, to do this, we take a tape measure (ruler), measure the width of the board, then divide the resulting value in half and put a mark closer to the edge of the board.

Then we put the same mark on the other side of the board, take a guide (for example, a rule), set it clearly along the points and only then draw a straight line between them.

Agree, you need to make a lot of manipulations to draw one line. In addition, it may not always be convenient to make markings in this way (imagine that you need to mark in half the end of a board 18 - 20 mm thick and more than a meter long).

Forget about this method, you can cope with this task much faster! In my time, on the advice of a carpenter friend, I made a simple device for quickly marking the board in half. It saves a lot of time and now I will share with you how to do it.

For this device, we only need a piece of 20 mm thick strip.

First of all, you need to draw a straight line along the rail (not necessarily in the center).

Then we put a mark approximately in the center of the line and two more along the edges, so that they are at the same distance from the center point. And now the most important thing is to drill perpendicular holes (at the extreme points with an 8 mm drill, and in the central one with a 7 mm drill).

To drill perpendicular holes, it is advisable to have at least some kind of drill stand. But if it is not there, you can use the simplest device for drilling holes at an angle of 90 degrees. One such device is a bar with a perpendicular line. We put the block tightly to the drill and drill a hole, guided by the mark.

Now we need the most common dowels.

We apply glue and insert them into the extreme holes.

It remains only to insert a pencil into the middle hole and that's it, the device is ready! We rest on the ends of the board (timber) with dowels and draw a line that will divide our workpiece exactly in the middle. The entire layout will take a few seconds and no measurements need to be made.