Isn't it wild how we trust two faulty sources to cancel each other out, but they just double up on the same mistake? This reminds me of my GPS vs. my own sense of direction on long drives, both are wrong in their own special way and the real answer is usually a gas station attendant who's lived there forever. I've started treating the load cell and the chart like two kids telling different stories, they're both lying a little until I measure the boom angle myself with a protractor app on my phone. That old school tape measure and a calculator has saved me more times than any fancy screen.

Gotta push back a little on the flat file part. A file would leave its own scratches, not just clean up the surface. You'd want a scraper or a plane for that low angle trick. But I get the bigger point, my grandfather's workbench has a massive burn mark from a soldering iron mishap in the 80s. He never sanded it out, said it was a reminder to check your ground wire first. The gouges and stains really do tell a story, like a tree's rings but for your screwups and wins.

Honestly this made me rethink my whole silica setup.

if you're always nickel and diming your numbers" - what did he mean by that exactly?

Right, rushing a job ruins the whole thing for good masons.