One of the best things I ever did (woodworking wise) was see a demonstration by a guy from Sweden who built a three legged stool out of bare stock (some limbs he had picked out of the woods the day before and a section of tree trunk).
This was impressive because he did it in 2.5 hours using only hand tools. Obviously he never needed to go to the gym. But, reflecting back on it, the thing that really impressed me was how he never once used a tape or ruler or any scale of any kind.
The closest thing he used was a T-bevel to align the angles of the 3 legs (he free-handed the first, then matched the angle using the T-bevel by sighting down it while boring the second and third holes with a hand auger:
For any linear distance, since he had the actual item in front of him, he just used it to mark the length to be repeated on the item to be cut with a knife.
I realized that the only need for a tape or scale was for standardization of items which are built at two different locations - it makes little sense to measure a dimension when you have the item it is to fit to transfer the dimension to. Every time we read a dimension or transfer it to or from a scale is an additional source of error (not that woodworking can ever be precise to the 0.001" level (the wood will shift more than that). That was an epiphany for me, so I thought to share it as food for thought!