Thank you! I was pretty excited to find it. I've seen the stand in the Slocomb catalog I've got from the 1920s, but I never expected to actually see one.

It was pretty ratty when I got it, but I'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out.

Same size range, different brand. The set he built the case for are Mitutoyo, while mine are J.T. Slocomb.

Things. And also, stuff.

In all seriousness, I make all kinds of things. Brackets and idler pullies to install a supercharger in my mid-90s Saturn. Valve brackets for my beer brewing rig. A replacement part for a very expensive pen (<-- shameless plug for my YT channel).

I'm currently building a 3D printer, and I'm using some of the larger mics to make sure the frame is parallel and perpendicular where it needs to be. I've also designed and machined my own custom hotend.

Sometimes it feels like I'm mostly using my machines to make parts to modify/improve each other. But it's still a lot of fun.

I've got a couple of digital mics, as well as some digital calipers, which see use in my basement shop.

Yeah, even simply zeroing the big boys using the standard rods is challenging. Especially the 22-23" I've got.

It's a rack of micrometers, which are measuring tools used to measure very small distances (0.001"). Required tools for machinists, and many others.

Those are standards. They're rods of a calibrated length, used to adjust each mic to zero. Each micrometer has a corresponding standard rod. The black plastic sleeves on each one serve to insulate them from the heat of your hand, which can cause the standard to expand, thus no longer be exact.

Thanks a lot!

I've got a Slocomb catalog from the early 1900s, and it actually says oak. Thankfully, my coworker had some scrap pieces that fit the bill perfectly. Couple of coats of polyurethane, and done!

It is, yes. As it arrived to me, the slats were made from ratty-ass plywood. A coworker kindly donated some scrap oak he had.

Agreed. At the very least, I intend to have the standards checked.

I'm just a home-shop hobbyist, so they pass muster as far as I'm concerned. And they definitely see use!

Fair points. If I understand correctly, the measuring faces are checked using a set of optical flats, each a slightly different length, to check for parallelism at different rotational positions of the spindle, right?

It's an instrument used to measure very precisely, down to 3, or even 4 decimal places of accuracy. Used mostly in machining and/or metal work.

Each micrometer only has one inch of range, 0-1", 1-2", etc.. The set I've posted measures to 12", so there's 11 mics total.

I've enjoyed Adam Savage's journey. Wild to see someone I admire so much, have the same kinds of struggles and learning experiences that I have.

I haven't! I shall seek that out as soon as possible.

I got these one at a time, mostly. Just cruised ebay.

Thanks!

Everything is flexible, to some degree. Drop a feather onto a pool table, and the weight of that feather will bend the slate of the pool table. It's a tiny, tiny, TINY amount, but given appropriately sensitive equipment, you will find that there's a deflection.

When you're measuring down to 3, 4, or especially 5 decimal places, even the heat of your breath can distort a part a measureable amount.

Robin Renzetti has a great demonstration of this, if you're curious. Skip to 31:00 for the relevant part.

Lol! It's a workshop. Always gonna be a mixed bag. Pretty tools, ugly work surfaces.

They're honestly not hard to restore... Disassemble, clean, strip paint, re-enamel the engravings, mask, paint, reassemble with a drop of appropriate oil, calibrate. Just takes patience and attention to detail.

There's probably around $500 in all this. Plus a couple hundred of hours of my own work.

I'd love to have them all lapped, but that's beyond any equipment I have, and prohibitively expensive to have done.

There aren't a lot of places that can do it, anyway.

Been into machining a long time. Subscribed to a couple dozen different machining channels.

Check out Clickspring. His clock-making series is amazing, even if you're not into machining.

Good range on them, too!

Lol relax! This is my basement shop. The walls don't need to be pretty.

As for the granite... That's the most important thing in my shop. It's called a surface plate, and it's flat. Very, very flat. The difference between the highest and lowest points, over the entire 12"x18" surface, is less than 0.0002".

A surface plate is the reference for the entire shop. Using various instruments, I can use the plate to tell if a part I made is flat, if opposite faces are parallel, or if perpendicular faces are, in fact, perfectly square. I can measure the height of objects relative to one another. I can use it to make other things flat, and then use those things to check the flatness of other things, such as the sliding surfaces between different moving parts of a machine.

Mine is a relatively small surface plate. They can get downright huge. 10, 20 feet long, and 1-2 feet thick. And bigger.

Mostly, measuring instruments like this are used in precision machining. Metalworking lathes, milling machines... Stuff like that. I have a small hobby shop in my basement with a lathe, a mill, and a couple of other machines.

Machining in and of itself is a big part of my hobby, but it also supports basically all the other things I'm interested in. I've designed and machined a custom hotend for my 3d printer. I've machined mounts and pulleys to mount a supercharger on my mid-90s Saturn. Brackets for valves on my beer brewing rig. Custom feet for my bed, which house scales, which I use to tell my home automation system when I'm in bed. I could go on.

As for the thread wear compensation... I'll preface this by saying that Starrett and Mitutoyo are fine instruments, have been around for a long time, and are basically industry standard as far as I know. Thread wear in a micrometer is not a huge issue, and plenty of those mics are still kicking, and still accurate, with decades on the clock.

So, quick and dirty micrometer terminology:

• Thimble: the part you actually turn with your fingers.
• Spindle: rod that sticks out of the of the thimble. Has external threads on the end inside the thimble, the other end is a very flat face, which is one half of the measuring surfaces
• Barrel: cylindrical part of the micrometer frame, has internal threads that the spindle screws into
• Frame: the main body of the instrument.
• Anvil: sits in the frame, directly opposite the spindle. This is the other half of the flad measuring surfaces.

Starrett and Mitutoyo compensate for thread wear using a tapered, threaded collar at the far end of the barrel. There's slits in the end where the anvil screws in, and the tapered thread is on the outside. As you tighten the collar, it squeezes those slits smaller, which tightens the internal threads.

The problem with that, is it's only those first couple of threads that are taking up the slack.

The Slocomb micrometers use a 2-piece threaded portion. The 2 pieces have serrations that mesh. If the thread wears, you simply tighten the outer collar one or two serrations, and all the slack is gone. The difference here is that by clocking the threads differently, it causes all the threads to be engaged, rather than just a few at the very end.

This distributes the wear over more surface area, which will make it wear slower. Plus, you can clock the threads infinitely, whereas you can only tighten a tapered collar so much.

Yeah, it doesn't take much effort to keep things in good shape. But even that seems a tall order for some people. Especially if they're communal-use tools. There's a reason I have my own personal torque wrenches and other assorted calibrated tooling at my job (aircraft mechanic).