My old foreman said to always cut stair stringers 3 inches long, and he was dead right

Troy Thompson · 2026-09-30T23:15:05.463086+00:00

Back when I was a second year apprentice in Tulsa, my foreman Ray used to say "cut your stringers long, you can always take more off but you can't put it back." I thought he was just being lazy about math, so I laughed it off for a couple of jobs. Then I got put on a set of deck stairs with a 7/11 rise and run, and I cut everything tight to my layout. The stringer came up short at the landing because I forgot to account for the thickness of the tread nosing. I had to scrap a $60 piece of pressure treated 2x12 and start over in front of the homeowner. Ray walked by, didn't say a word, just pointed at the scrap pile and smirked. Since then I've cut every stringer about 3 to 4 inches long and trimmed to fit with a circ saw and a speed square. Saved me on a curved set in Broken Arrow two summers back when my plate cut was off by a half inch. Anybody else got an old timer saying that sounded dumb at the time but turned out to be gospel?

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My old foreman said to always cut stair stringers 3 inches long, and he was dead right | Carpenters - Talk Freely