It depends on which side of the blade or stop the scale sits and which way the work is fed. Tapes come left-to-right, right-to-left and centre-reading. Ordering the wrong direction produces a scale that counts away from the cut and cannot be used, and it is the most common mistake when buying.

At the actual cutting line or stop face, not the end of the bench, and with blade kerf taken into account where the cut removes material. Applying the tape even a few millimetres out builds a constant error into every subsequent cut, and it will not be noticed until something does not fit.

Cleaned thoroughly and degreased, since surface preparation determines adhesion far more than the adhesive grade does. A tape applied over dust, oil or coolant residue lifts at one end later, and a partly lifted tape is worse than none because it still looks readable while being displaced.

Generally not without damage - the adhesives are designed to stay put under coolant, sawdust and cleaning, so removal usually destroys the tape. Measure and dry-position carefully before peeling the backing, and on a long run apply progressively rather than laying the whole length at once.

Machines where the work is positioned symmetrically about a central blade or datum, so the scale reads outward in both directions from zero at the centre. Panel saws and some cross-cut setups use them, and they remove the mental arithmetic of halving a dimension every time.

Steel tapes with a protective coating tolerate workshop coolant and washdown well. Sustained outdoor exposure degrades both adhesive and printing over time, so for outdoor benches an anodised or stainless scale is a better choice, and the surface still needs to be clean and dry at application.

The tape itself is manufactured to a stated tolerance and is generally accurate over its length. In practice the accuracy of the setup is dominated by how precisely zero was positioned and by the stop or blade itself, so the installation matters far more than the tape's specification.