Shim

The long bench by the hearth had rocked on the uneven flagstones for as long as the girl could remember, one leg a hair shorter than the rest, so that it tipped whenever two sat down at the same end. Nyra meant to steady it with a shim before the winter work brought folk crowding to the warm. She turned the bench on its side and ran a flat hand along the floor to find where the short leg fell shy of the stone.

A shim is a thin tapered sliver of wood, she showed the girl, driven into the small gap under a leg that does not quite reach the floor. The wedge fills the shortfall so the leg presses on the shim and the shim presses on the stone, and the rocking stops. A whole new leg was not wanted, only the little that the one leg lacked, and the shim gives exactly that little and no more.

Nyra pared an oak sliver down thin at one end and fed it under the short leg, tapping it home with the heel of a mallet until the bench stood square and still on the flags. She set the girl to press on each corner in turn, and no corner gave. The shim had taken up the gap that the uneven floor had left, and the bench that had rocked for years sat quiet.

The girl wished to keep the way of it, and Nyra let her set down the thickness of the shim and the leg it went under in the margin. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The measure of the shim can travel to the next hand, she noted, but the knack of feeling the moment a rocking leg comes to rest is a thing the fingers learn and the page could not carry.

When the bench stood firm and the girl had set the figure down, Nyra turned it upright again and sat at the short end to prove it. The book keeps the measure of the shim, and you keep the leveling of it.