I thought that I would post this light bulb moment. Perhaps someone else has done it in the past, but the idea is new to me. I've been building some wall cabinets with mahogany that I got for a good price. The reason that the price was good was that it was kind of a pile of boards that someone brought in to the lumber place. Most of their usual stock was nice straight stuff. What I got was mostly straight and already surfaced. But it was obviously an old stock. Many of the boards had slight bends and some winding.
What I wanted to discuss was the subject of winding sticks. Having read about and trying the traditional technique of using winding sticks to check the twist in the boards, I've employed the technique in the past. Each time, I had to make a new set of sticks, since the last ones would have been used and then lost. I wear glasses, so part of the technique involved trying to get the sticks to line up and then to get the proper focus through my glasses. I've lost the ability to accommodate many years ago, so that focusing on the near and far sticks at the same time, which looking over my glasses (I'm near-sighted) and then through them is not easy. In addition, since the nearer stick is visualized over the top of the glasses and the farther stick is seen through the glasses, I am flipping the glasses up and down to try to line up the two. (Maybe I can stand on my head to avoid this). In addition, I have trouble getting a good look along the transverse direction to judge the tilt of the sticks. Can't seem to pick up both ends of both sticks at the same time. Anyway, checking for winding is a process I've learned to dread. Also care must be taken to have the sticks parallel or your results are skewed.
So, where's the light-bulb? I realized that most of the time, the boards are flat along their width at either end, so that placing a gauge of some sort anywhere on each end of the board is valid. Furthermore, I had many devices to check right angles in my workshop: adjustable squares, triangles, roofing squares, and so on. I always had something handy to check for winding. Many of these I can stand up without additional support. If I placed an adjustable square or triangle on either end of the board, I could sight along them and verify that their edges are parallel or not. I no longer had to worry about flipping my glasses up and down. Since I am comparing the edges, it wasn't crucial to place them exactly perpendicular to the length of the board. They just had to stand up on the board unsupported.
That's it. Get rid of those winding sticks. Another part of my technique for straightening out bends and twists is to use a scrub plane (I have a wonderful 100 year old Stanley) to remove the unnecessary bumps in the wood before running it over a jointer and through the planer. Hope this is useful to someone.
Edit: I'm afraid that I didn't clearly state what I did differently. Bill, the second post below, identified what I did. What I did differently was not to place random objects on the boards to visualize the winding. I was able to use the vertical limb of the square or triangle to provide an indicator perpendicular to the board. This also minimized my problem with accommodation as well as difficulty of crouching down to see the winding sticks (couldn't keep myself steady while crouched, so couldn't compare the ends of the sticks). Probably could also place a backdrop behind the squares to easily see the verticals.