Dial callipers

Who's been a good boy, then?

[ soundtrack : Where Are We Now? - David Bowie (2013) ]

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One of the many advantages of being an all-round fantastic personage such as Myself, is that you begin receiving Christmas presents even before December has begun. My good, old friend Dieter in Berlin has sent me a package again — it’s like he reads my mail (and has my account number).

“You’re so precise in your work!“ is what all the attractive, young women who somehow find their way down to my low-rent underground workshop always say as they bat their eyelashes at me. “Would you like to see the tool that makes it all possible?“ I ask before I whip out my callipers and begin explaining how the Vernier scale utilises linear mechanical interpolation, thereby increasing resolution and reducing measurement error …

Even in my imagination they’ve lost interest.

And that’s why I’ve switched to dial callipers. It has nothing to do with me needing glasses; that’s just vile rumours set out by my archnemesis to sow doubt about my abilities. I’ve written a post about this topic before; this one is mostly to show off my newest toy :-) I’ve got a new, long dial calliper!

I started out with the usual vernier callipers and carried one of those in the right back pocket of my dungarees for a couple of decades. When working in my verksted it’s my most frequently used measuring tool. For measurements up to 2 metres I use my modern version of the wooden, folding ‘yardstick’. For more imprecise lengths of up to 5 metres I have a pair of tape measures. I even have a spool of measuring tape 30 metres long for when I get to build my timber frame dream-workshop. I dust if off every five years — a ritual of despondency.

I’ve also tried a cheap, digital calliper. Too much complication (theme of our times, eh?) in order to do a task that is easier done mechanically. I do not appreciate the ever-changing ‘hundreds’ and the need to suddenly buy batteries to get the job done. If you accept this foolishness you’re halfway to agreeing to a yearly payment for ‘our premium measuring subscription’ — at least in principle ... and principles count! What else would you live by?

It was a revelation for me to discover the cheap, fiberglass reinforced nylon callipers from SHINWA. I have two: one about the bench and another in the machine shop. In my experience, ‘fine woodworking’ is down to a couple of tenths (of millimetres); your smoothing plane will take a tenth or two when you’re fitting one part to another; being able to accurately measure sizes (using your brain to work on an abstract, numerical level while shaping your parts) is a great boon for any thinking woodworker. The non-thinking woodworker will be surprised whenever his parts are suddenly too small — a mystery each time.

With my new, long (300 mm) calliper I am able to measure to within one hundredth of a millimetre — that’s the thickness of a blonde fly’s cunt-hair. (If this insults you, feel free to fuck right off! Remember: this is my workshop, not your ‘safe space’.)

I find dial-callipers much more intuitive to read, like an old-fashioned wristwatch; analogue — your brain does not really have to process the information like it would the digits on a display, you just see how much.

All this just to tell you that I’m a happy camper, a satisfied customer, a blissful bovine. Now I can do a bit more than I could before. I call that progress.

And I have been a very good boy this year, but I make no promises for the next.

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