HF $9.99 Deals

[junquecol]

Today, I went to HF to get one of their 6" stainless steel digital calipers, and a set of their "knock off Uni bits." Each item was, you guessed it $9.99. Surprisingly, the knock offs were made in China using licensed patent tech. from the USA. Calipers are usually $12.99 on sale. I'm thinking of mounting a set on my planer as a height gauge. I also picked up a pair of their (on sale) $3.99) goat skin driving gloves. They are as soft as a baby's back side.

 

[CarvedTones]

Are the larger SS calipers knocked down in similar fashion or just the 6" one?

 

[eyekode]

Interesting idea on the planer. Let me know if you figure out a good way to zero the scale. I would like digital read out on my planer as well but am thinking about something like this: http://grizzley.com/products/0-6-Digital-Fractional-Horizontal-Vertical-Remote-Scale/T21577

Same problem though... how to zero it.

 

[CarvedTones]

Salem,

On my cheap composite caliper, and I think/hope the SS ones are the same or better, you press the Zero button.

If you do it while it is open it measures in either direction (unless you have it all the way open ).

 

[eyekode]

Sorry, you lost me. For a planer I don't want to zero it right? The planer cannot actually make it to 0 thickness so the 0 button doesn't help so much (unless I am missing something)...

 

[CarvedTones]

You clamp it to something to suspend it over the planer bed, open it until it hits bottom, zero it, close it enough for stock to slide under, open it back until it hits stock then read the gauge - that is the stock thickness. Adjust the planer until the stock can feed in easily, measure between passes to monitor progress. It probably tells you in your planer manual how much the height adjusts per turn of the wheel, but you could double check that using the caliper.

 

[junquecol]

Interesting idea on the planer. Let me know if you figure out a good way to zero the scale. I would like digital read out on my planer as well but am thinking about something like this: http://grizzley.com/products/0-6-Digital-Fractional-Horizontal-Vertical-Remote-Scale/T21577

Same problem though... how to zero it.

Salem, you can't do a zero to the bed of the planer. Very few if any go down that small. The knives would strike the bed. What you do is run a piece of wood through, and then measure it. Then without moving planer height, zero your calipers. Subtract the needed thickness from the actual thickness to see how much more stock needs to be removed. Because digital calipers will read in negative numbers, you run head down to this setting on following passes.

 

[CarvedTones]

I had been meaning to post this "how-to" as it came up in another thread a few days ago:

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/f101/using-caliper-height-gauge-30485-post302504/

I don't worry about math and positive or negative numbers. Distance is absolute; I zero it where I want to measure from.