Old timer on my crew taught me about leveling rails the hard way

Amy Anderson · 2026-05-27T05:55:04.065394+00:00

I was out on a job last month re-leveling a set of door rails on an Otis 211 and this 50 year veteran stopped me cold. He pointed out I was shimming from the bottom up instead of checking the whole bracket plane first, which just passes the problem down the line. Has anyone else run into that mistake or am I the only one who learned this late in the game?

sage_green4mo ago

yeah but is it really that deep for a set of door rails lol

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lilya764mo ago

Wait, isn't that the real trick though... spotting a bad bracket before you even lay a shim? I had an old timer walk me through running a straightedge across the whole bracket plane first, then marking every spot that was off by more than a business card thickness. It's tedious but it saves you from chasing your tail later when everything still feels wobbly.

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vera_johnson94mo ago

Thats a really good point and I bet most guys never think about it that way. Did the old timer explain exactly how to check the whole bracket plane before you start? Because I feel like thats the part people miss. Everyone is SO focused on the shims they forget the brackets themselves might be off. If the bracket is twisted or the wall is bowed then shimming bottom up just hides the problem till you hit the top and everything is out. Ive seen jobs where the whole stack was wavy because nobody checked the brackets first. How do you even identify a bad bracket without pulling the rails completely apart?

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