Thank God for...

Yup. God, the original Intelligent Designer. >:->

Cheers! Rich

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I completely agree. I have many. Even the cheap ones from Harbor Freight are worth their price and get used a lot. They're also useful as a quick inchmm converter.

Bob

Mine's a dial caliper that I've had forever. Indispensable.

is on sale for $7.99 right now.

I have one of these, too. It sells for $9.99.

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=A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

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Who doesn't. I bought mine years ago. Only Jim-out-of-touch-with- reality-Thompson would bother congratulating himself in a public forum for owning what everybody else has had for years.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

As far as I'm aware, the "fractional read-out" type ones that Jim refers to are a relatively recent innovation -- not very prominent much more than, say,

Regular old decimal-reading digital calipers have certainly been around for decades, although my recollection is that it wasn't until somewhere in the late '90s that they became inexpensive enough that your average, say, do-it-yourselfer homeowner could justify owning one.

In the early '90s a machine shop I worked at had just switched over their stock from the original slide rule-type calipers to dial calipers. If you were unlucky (lots of people working on a given day) you could still end up with the old ones; no one liked that!

Slowman is a Europeon. He wouldn't know what a "fractional readout" was if it bit him.

In the early '90s they were in the $100 range. Now they can be had for $15 in a good sale.

My office mate (our ME) still uses dial calipers.

$7.99 right now at Harbor Freight.

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Actually, I'm Australian. I know the digital equivalents of the regular fractional measurements off the top of my head, and can't imagine why anybody would want a display that displayed in sixteenths or sixty-fourths of an inch. I'm also pretty good at translating the old fractions of an inch measurements into millimetres.

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And I still use my old vernier calipers when the digital unit is out of reach.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmege

$24 for 8" in/mm/fract stainless steel caliper from Amazon, Feb 2009. ...Jim Thompson

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For those who don't know what a fractional display is.. here it is in all its glory.. 1/128ths of an inch..

Well you see, Bil, in this country we never actually got around to fully converting over to the metric system, so there's an awful lot of dimensioning that's still done in fractions of an inch. :-) While certainly one can convert back and forth better fractions and their decimal equivalents, if you're having to do a whole lot of such conversions (and arithmetic with those values) it can start to become a bit error prone and life is then just easier and more reliable if you choose one system and stay with it. Sometimes, in the U.S., that system of choice is still fractions...

---Joel

Like my drill bit rack ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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Here, we measure with the micrometer, and then cut it with a chainsaw. :)

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I was brought up with feet and inches, and while Europe is pretty thoroughly metric, my favourite chisel has an 18mm wide blade - which is close enough to 3/4" for most practical purposes. The next wider one is 25mm and the narrower 12mm ...

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If you have to do a lot, it stops being error-prone and becomes automatic.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

No numbered or lettered drills?

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Wimp! You need to step up to a cutting torch!

dimensioning

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easier

Plasma cutter.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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I need magnifiers to read the worn etching :-( ...Jim Thompson