Thread: Digital calipers under $20

I bought an 8 inch from ebay recently for $25 seems very good for the price. Seller obviously has them in bulk.

Our local Mitre 10 Home & Trade had them last week. Though thay may have been good for a second set in the workshop. They were only plastic so unfortunately the plastic V in the jaws will disappear very quickly and they will lose any semblance of accuracy when measuring thin/narrow items.

I put them back very quickly.

Kev M

Have a look at the ones on ebay metal with carbide jaws.

Originally Posted by Tiger

Bunnies have got digital calipers for under $20. Not sure how good they are, but they are in their recent catalogue. Now we can add an extra level of precision to our jigs...

Depends how much accuracy you want. If you just want to guage your snags before you chuck them on the barbie then I'd go for the Bunnies caliper. If you want repeatable accurate measurements down to 0.001mm accuracy then Id go for something better.

I was going to use a set as a bandsaw tension guage. Just clamp the jaws to the blade a suitable distance apart, zero the display & wind up the tension until the correct number appears - the bandsaw is now correctly tensioned. Info on the correct ammount of stretch is in the 'New Best of FWW' book on shop machinery.

I got a set off Ebay for about $15 measures 160mm. They are the carbide sort. Accurate to .1 mm which is good enough for a hacker like me. Also they survive being droped on concrete.

Seems like excellent value to me.

Thanks for that tip.

Plastic is a good thing for attaching to things, just cut off what you don't want with a pair of side cutters.

I just hooked one up to my CTJ-680 thicknesser. Made the bottom end slotted to allow for adjustment, 150mm length is just right for this unit.

Mike

Originally Posted by mikeyp

Thanks for that tip.

Plastic is a good thing for attaching to things, just cut off what you don't want with a pair of side cutters.

I just hooked one up to my CTJ-680 thicknesser. Made the bottom end slotted to allow for adjustment, 150mm length is just right for this unit.

Mike

I've just paid 40 bucks for mine from Bunnings. Metal. Digital display.

I have a pair of the $40 mainly metal ones, quality seems OK so far (2 months) but the batteries are crap.

The cheaper ones are supposed to be plastic / carbon fibre.


Cheers............Sean

Originally Posted by mikeyp

I just hooked one up to my CTJ-680 thicknesser. Made the bottom end slotted to allow for adjustment, 150mm length is just right for this unit.

Mike

Hi Mike,

An interesting and diametrically opposite viewpoint to my own

I really don't much care how thick the thicknessed boards are - so long all members of a batch are the same!

It's a bit like M/T joints where one typically makes the mortice first, or D/T joints where pins come first (for me anyway); I then make the tenons or the tails to suit, and don't care greatly what the dimensions are.

Where I do care about accuracy is in a stick or panel's length.

BTW I do have some metal jawed inside/outside digital calipers that can provide both a metric & Imperial readout, but only to .01 of a mm (or equivalent) - but then I'd be fooling myself if I thought I could cut wood more accurately than that. Even if I could, expansion/contraction would quickly make a nonsense of such precision. Rather different with more stable materials though.

Originally Posted by Auld Bassoon

...but only to .01 of a mm

ONLY, Steve? Shyte, mate, you've got high standards!


Cheers............Sean

Steve,

I wasn't really advocating my preferences on how a thicknesser should be used. My main point was the vernier being plastic is good for fitting to anything.

The plastic verniers are only accurate to 0.1mm, which with my mounting is probably out by at least that again. That's still good enough.

The main reason for doing this is that the CTJ-680 has serrated feed roller which will mark any soft wood, so you have to cut at least 1 - 1.5mm off minimum. Now I can be certain that I will get it right and only take off what is needed.

Another reason is when I want something thicknessed to a particular size like a spacer. I just set it to the exact height and cut them.

Finally it will give me some repeatability when I'm disorganised and change the height only to find later I needed to run another piece through the previous setup.

Regards,
Mike

After reading this thread I decided to buy the $40 vernier from Bunnies and like what it can do for me. However, the manual talks about measuring "steps" and I cannot fathom what this measures nor a practical example of what it is or how to do it. Help! Can someone post a pic of an example on a real project.

Dave, if you move the jaws on the caliper to, say, 1"; then turn the calipers over and look at the top of the head.

You should see the top of one of the jaws is exactly 1" above the top of the other. This is used to take, as the instructions say, a "step" measurement. This could be the vertical height of a router bit (would obviously need to span the opening), an offset of one board to another; it will hopefully make sense when you look at the jaws.

I've used this step measurement on a cheapo pair for marking out, ie. for screw holes 25mm from one edge, set the calipers to 25mm, lay the calipers on the panel so the top of the bottom jaw is against the panel edge, if you've got it right the top edge of the top jaw will be exactly 25mm from the edge. I'd then make a pencil mark on that edge and move to the next. N.B. this sort of use for verniers is not for your good pair

Hope that explains it .............cheers.............Sean