The stick carried regular divisions and one deeper notch. Apprentice Yara assumed the notch marked a specialist barrel size. Her late teacher used the stick often but never explained the extra line.
His daughter recognized it immediately. He measured her height against the workshop door, then copied one year's mark onto the stick when the door was replaced. The tool held a private measurement among its working scales.
Yara checked the old workshop photograph and found the original line just visible beside the latch. She recorded the daughter's account separately from the stick's technical description. A visitor could understand both uses without confusing a child's height with an industry standard.
When Yara made her own measuring stick, she left its divisions unaltered. Her teacher's notch was not a tradition she needed to imitate. Its meaning came from a particular child at a particular age, standing in a doorway while her father paused his work long enough to notice how much she had grown.