elanjacobs
3rd December 2014, 11:15 PM
Well I picked up my 3m Talmeter from the group purchase today and initial thoughts were "well this is a bit of a let down"
First of all, the blade lock needs to be held very firmly down to extend AND retract the tape (as opposed to the normal lock that lets you freely extend); I have pretty small hands and find it awkward to push hard enough - don't know if bigger hands would make it better or worse (it's a small tape). So the whole quickly-whip-the-tape-out-and-measure-something is a bit of a pain. This is also due to...
The scribing point fixed to the case. Because it's the same length as the tape-end I catch my finger on it. Every. Bloody. Time. If they'd made the tape-end 1-2mm longer this wouldn't be an issue, but, as it is, it looks like I'm going to end up with a nice callous on the outside of my left index finger. I'd imagine this would also cause the point to bend out of shape after a while.
Finally the tape itself. Are they still living in the 80s and using dot-matrix printers??? In my 7 years of work I've never seen such a poorly printed scale - even the $5 Chinese junk tape lying around at home is clearer and has finer lines. The 150mm rulers seem to have a similar problem with the scale being quite heavy.
Well that's my rant done. I'm interested to hear what others think of it.
P.S. There might be a 3m Talmeter going cheap in a few weeks, depends how irritating I find it:~
First of all, the blade lock needs to be held very firmly down to extend AND retract the tape (as opposed to the normal lock that lets you freely extend); I have pretty small hands and find it awkward to push hard enough - don't know if bigger hands would make it better or worse (it's a small tape). So the whole quickly-whip-the-tape-out-and-measure-something is a bit of a pain. This is also due to...
The scribing point fixed to the case. Because it's the same length as the tape-end I catch my finger on it. Every. Bloody. Time. If they'd made the tape-end 1-2mm longer this wouldn't be an issue, but, as it is, it looks like I'm going to end up with a nice callous on the outside of my left index finger. I'd imagine this would also cause the point to bend out of shape after a while.
Finally the tape itself. Are they still living in the 80s and using dot-matrix printers??? In my 7 years of work I've never seen such a poorly printed scale - even the $5 Chinese junk tape lying around at home is clearer and has finer lines. The 150mm rulers seem to have a similar problem with the scale being quite heavy.
Well that's my rant done. I'm interested to hear what others think of it.
P.S. There might be a 3m Talmeter going cheap in a few weeks, depends how irritating I find it:~