Anyone else just cut to the published dimensions and skip the tuning?

I've built three wire yagis off published plans over the years and only one needed any trimming, and that was becuase I misread my own notes and cut one element short. The others came up close enough on the meter that I left them alone. My thinking is these designs get built by alot of people, so the dimensions you find online have ussually been shaken down alredy. What actually messes things up is sloppy work on your end, not the plan. I clamp a tape to the boom, mark every cut with a sharpie, and check the spacing between elements too, because a printed holder a couple millimeters off will shift things more than a hair of error on the wire length. Where I'd draw the line is purpose. For repeaters and satellites, 1.4 is fine and I wouldn't touch it. But if I wanted this thing for weak signal work on the low end of 2m, I'd sweep it and nudge the driven element a little shorter, since those designs are usually centered higher up the band. Sounds like you measured carefully and got the reward for it. On my second build I got lazy with the spacing and spent a whole evening chasing it, so enjoy the win.

I built a six element beam for SSB work on 2m a couple years back and took the opposite approach to you. Cut everything to the plan, swept it, and it sat around 1.5 down at the repeater end of the band but climbed badly up where the sideband stuff lives. Ended up shortening the driven element in small slices over two evenings untill it was happy where I actually operate. So my answer to your question is that it depends entirely on where in the band you'll use it. A wide chunk of 2m FM around the calling frequencies is forgiving, but if you push toward the top of the band the same antenna starts looking stubborn. The other thing I learned from that build is that a good match and a good antenna are not the same animal. Mine tuned up sweet and still had a lousy pattern until I spotted the parasitic elements were drooping because my PVC sagged in the sun. SWR told me nothing about that. I replaced the boom with aluminium tube and the difference on weak signals was night and day while the meter reading never moved.

For what you're doing, pointing it at repeaters from the driveway, I'd say quit while you're ahead. Where I'd push back on the previous poster is the word lucky. Published dims for these wire beams are usually solid, but wire diameter, the holders, and even how tightly you bend the hairpins all nudge the resonance around a bit. Your 1.4 tells me your build happened to land where the designer intended, not that trimming is a waste of time in general.

Agree with the SSB reply about tuning where you actually use it. Same thing happened to me with a little tape measure beam for 70cm. It looked fine on the bench, then I got it up on a pole next to the garage and the sweet spot moved up the band a bit, probaly the gutter and siding doing thier thing. Ended up rechecking it in place with a low power reading instead of trusting the workbench numbers. Now I always do the final check with the antenna mounted where it will actually live, even if it means a buddy holding the analyzer while I shout down from the ladder.

This is encouraging because I've got a length of wire and a bag of dowels sitting in the garage waiting for the same project. The one thing I keep wondering about is the wire itself, since the plans I found don't say much about it. Does it matter if mine is thicker or thinner than what the design calls for, or is close enugh there too? I'd hate to build the whole thing and find my stuff bends the numbers somewhere the plans never accounted for.

Not buying the claim from the first reply that holder spacing errors matter more than wire length. Every build I've done, the driven element length is what moves the dip around, spacing just nudges the pattern a bit. I once swapped a bent element for a straight one of identical length and the SWR never budged, but trimming even a few mm off the driven element walked the match all over the band. Guess it depends which element you're sloppy with, but I'd still measure the cuts twice before I sweat the holder tolerances.