When it goes wrong

The preview is a flat grey disc

Almost always the photo, not the tool. A very dark image asks for so much thread that the whole board fills in — thread only ever adds darkness, never removes it.

Fix it in this order:

1. Lighten the photo before uploading, or raise Brightness in the studio’s image settings.
2. Leave Auto levels on.
3. Drop the darkness preset from Intense to Balanced or Light.
4. Crop tighter, so more of the frame is subject and less is dark background.

The result looks nothing like the photo

Squint at the photo. If it does not read at postage-stamp size, thread will not save it — see choosing a photo. The most common culprits are a busy background and a subject that is too small in the frame.

If it reads when squinted but not in thread, try:

• More nails — finer angular resolution, if your spacing allows it.
• A bigger board — the real limit on detail is the gap between nails, not the nail count.
• Favour the centre — spends more of the line budget where the face is.

The template printed at the wrong size

Measure the 10 cm bar on the cover page. If it is not 10 cm, the print was scaled.

• Choose Actual size or 100%, not “fit to page”.
• On macOS Preview, uncheck “Scale to fit”.
• On Adobe Reader, set Page Sizing to Actual size.
• Some drivers scale to the printable area by default — look for “shrink oversized pages”.

If your printer simply refuses, print at a shop, or switch to a size whose tiles are smaller than the printable area.

Tiles do not line up

They should butt edge to edge with no overlap, cut on the dashed line. Two things go wrong: cutting on the wrong line (the crop marks are outside the dashed border, not on it), and one sheet printing at a slightly different scale because the driver treated it differently. Print the whole document in one job.

Nails pull out or lean

Three causes, in order of likelihood:

1. Too much tension. Snug, not tight. This gets worse as line count rises.
2. Board too thin. Below about 1 cm, nails work loose. 5 mm board fails reliably.
3. Nails too short or too smooth. 20 to 30 mm driven at least half their length into the wood.

A leaning nail can sometimes be tapped back and the thread re-tensioned around it. A nail that has come out entirely is a repair job: re-drive it in the same hole with a drop of wood glue, let it set, and carry on.

The board looks darker than the preview

Expected. Real thread casts shadows, catches light and has physical width the render approximates. A piece usually reads about a stop darker than the screen.

If you want a lighter finished piece, solve the next one at the Light darkness preset, or reduce the line count.

I lost my place

Use Jump to line in the player. If you know roughly where you are, count backwards to the nearest bold every-tenth nail and jump to that line number.

If you genuinely have no idea, look at the board: the last chord you wound is the one whose end is loose. Find that nail number and search forward from your last known position for it. In practice, most people accept the drift instead — one or two wrong chords out of thousands are invisible at viewing distance.

The voice stopped talking

• iOS only exposes its voices after a user gesture. Press play once and it usually starts.
• Chrome cancels speech when a tab is backgrounded. Keep the tab in front.
• Some browsers have no voices installed at all. The numbers still display; the app says so in the player panel.
• Check the mute button and the system volume, in that order.

My project vanished

Projects are saved in your browser’s local storage, which means:

• They are per-browser and per-device. Chrome cannot see Safari’s projects.
• Private or incognito windows throw them away on close.
• “Clear browsing data” deletes them.
• Six projects are kept; the oldest drops off after that.

Before a long piece, use Save the project file in the studio. That JSON carries the sequence and your position, so a browser wipe costs you nothing and you can open it on another device. The winding sheet PDF is a good second backup — it is the one you can read without a computer.

The page will not load offline

The offline shell installs on your first visit to any page, over HTTPS, and it caches the studio and the template builder along with it. If the page you want was never cached, you will get the offline notice instead — load it once while online and it will be there next time.

Something else

The thing that fixes most problems is that solving is free. Change one input, solve again, look. Three attempts cost thirty seconds and teach more than any guide.