My Fowler-branded mics up to 4” have served me well enough, but I have to admit that they are not the soul of repeatability when measuring tenths (and they have tenth-reading verniers). I bought them many years ago and thought they might be Japanese, but I’ve changed my mind on that.
I needed a metric-reading mic for clock work and picked up a couple of the 0-25 Soviet-era mics, which are excellent and really made me realize the Fowlers were a bit squishy.
My bigger mics are all Lufkins, and are probably pictured upthread.
But I have misplaced the 0-1 Fowler temporarily, and I decided I needed redundancy. Plus, I’ve been confined to home with the flu and eBay is just too convenient. So, I started fishing for old Starrett mics. I avoid Mitutoyo because they are too often fakes, and Mahr is just too expensive.
I ended up with these:
What the heck, it’s a mix of plain, ratchet, and friction, but they all work perfectly and are spot on. Only the 1-2 doesn’t have carbide anvils, but I’m a careful guy. I ended up with two 0-1’s when I saw a deal I couldn’t pass up on the T230XRL after having bought the T230L. I got a T230L, a T230XRL, a T2RL 1-2, a T436XRL 2-3, and a T436XFL 3-4. Used manual-reading Starrett mics are a good enough deal that there’s no reason to buy less, it seems to me. These are on a par with the premium USSR mics. Old and good.
But back to Mahr. I did scratch the Mahr itch with this:
Yup, these are better than Starrett. Amazing feel. Bigger ones exceeded my itch-scratching budget, however.
I can spread these around.
And I bought a bevy of Starrett machinist clamps, a pair of 161-A, a pair of 161-C, and a 161-E. Can’t have too many of those.
Finally, this:
This is a 0.251-0.500 gauge pin set branded Ralmike’s. You guys probably saw these on eBay. It’s missing a few and a couple are replacements. The index is chintzy styrofoam with (now faint) size markings in a metal case, but these were well under the import set prices. The key gap is around 3/8, but I can replace those individually from Vermont, which probably made these. The question I had was whether these were plus or minus, but the measure to be +0.0001/-0.0000 in my spot checks, which I call neutral. Abundantly good for what I do. They extend my good sets of Meyer minus pins below a quarter inch. They are all shop-grade, but that’s fine with me.
I also picked up a couple of 1940’s Stanley planes to refurbish—not old enough to be collectible and expensive but old enough to be good quality. Pennies on the fancy-brand dollar and they will make good users for cellulose-composite machining. Yeah, wrong forum
Rick “man with two mics never knows what size the part is” Denney
