Essential measuring tools for the home shop

[TomG]

(08-31-2012, 12:13 PM)rleete Wrote: Essential tools? A scale, a square and a scribe. Desirable? A set of calipers and a micrometer. More advanced, a height guage and a dial indicator. Many beautiful engines were made with not much beyond the very basics.

You guys with pin gauges, bore measuring tools and the like are way off base for what is essential. Hence scaring off casual hobbiest guys who just want to make stuff. If doesn't all have to be to the nearest tenthousandth to work. It's not like we're all building space probes. The kid who reads these type of threads hoping to get started sees that he "needs" thousands of dollars in tools, and gets discouraged.

I work with guys who make lenses. Optics, working to tolerances you can't even see with the naked eye. They have to use a microscope to see the cuts, and yet most of them use only a good set of mics for everything else.

If you want to gloat over the fancy extras, that's okay, but don't class them "essential". I don't mean to sound so harsh, but lets be realistic here. No newbie is going to drop more on a set of bore gauges than he paid for his Craigslist lathe.

Hmmm...guess you didn't read my entire post. I thought I made it clear that a dial bore gauge was NOT essential and falls into the fluff category. I think we all covered the essential stuff pretty well in the first few posts.

Pin gauges however are one of those things that are very useful for measuring small holes and do have a place in the home shop after a set of small hole gauges (Ever try measuring a hole smaller than 1/8" with a small hole gauge?). They would fall into category #3 of the original post.

Tom