A piece of painter's tape saved my finish on a tricky scribe job

I was fitting a walnut shelf into a stone fireplace surround, and the stone was all over the place. My pencil line for the scribe kept getting lost in the grain. I tried a knife, but it was still messy. Then I remembered a guy at the lumberyard in Tacoma mentioning painter's tape. I put a strip right on the edge of the shelf where it met the stone, ran my pencil along the contour, and peeled it off. The line was perfect on the tape, stuck it back on the wood, and cut right to it. The fit was clean, no tear-out. Has anyone else used tape for a scribe on a really uneven surface? What's your go-to method?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma_williams14d agoMost Upvoted

Tape is just a messy crutch for real skill.

grays1314d ago

Is tape really that big of a deal? @uma_williams, sometimes it just gets the job done faster. Not everything needs to be a purity test.

avery_flores1714d agoTop Commenter

Totally agree about it getting the job done faster. I tried to do it the "right" way last week and spent an hour on a seam. Used tape yesterday and it was fixed in five minutes. Sometimes you just need to move on.