rustyfordgarage, you reminded me of when I was a kid and broke my dads also, I will never forget the penalty.
but I also broke one of mine in later years, you may have seen someone do this, I was cutting some 2" X 4" and
was using mine, cutting 8" blocks and had the rule open one fold, being myself, I would mark one piece, cut, mark the next,
but I would just slip the open rule in my back pocket, you must know what happened, I turned around to gab another 2 by
and the rule caught on the stack of lumber, hearing that snapping noise was not funny. in those days, money was tight.
another episode; later in life, I was working in a plant and the 1st time that I was involved in replacing a cable on a hoist, the guy
that I was working with handed me his folding rule and told me to go cut a new cable, I do not remember how long, but it was over 150 feet,
we would go to the cable shop, lay our rule on the floor and start pulling out the cable, keeping count of how many times we reached
the end of the rule, brought it back and we installed it.
testing it, the hook did not come down as far as it needed to ???? the guy asked me if I used his rule, yes I did, what was my count ?
I told him, he wrote it down, multiplied it and said it was wrong, I looked at his paper and saw that he had written 6 feet ??
the problem was that my rule at home was 8 feet, when I opened his, I never looked to see how long it was, "lesson learned"
yes, we had to cut another cable, but he went with me. no, I did not get fired, they called me a (AH, YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW."