"A bad workman...": the tool-chat thread.

Mitutoyo

That's the signal for @gbj_tester to drop by imminently.

I have some verniers I got from maplins about £15 and a proper mitutoyo pair which the cheap ones are copying. The difference is night and day, if you need precision then spend the money on the mitutoyo ones but if it’s just for bikes or something occasional and not super critical to be dead accurate then don’t waste your money, get a cheap vernier. There’s probably a fairly good cheap version out there.

Actual vernier or digital?

I thought I'd be old school and bought some half decent verniers but a couple months later my dad got me some cheap digitals and a digital micrometer for my birthday.

The verniers very quickly got relegated to 'kept in the garage and used to mark things out' and I use the cheap digital ones for anything that matters.

Mitutoyo any good ?

Yes, but probably overkill for home gamers. By all means get Mitutoyo if, like me, you love fine things which will last a lifetime, but I got away with £20 chinesium digital calipers for a decade before splashing out on the coolant-proof absolute digimatic #tartmode ones

and a torque wrench

There's a thread for that although it's not that helpful. In addition to Norbar, people seem happy with Wera, Britool, & Park. Strictly speaking, you probably need two torque wrenches, 2-20Nm for the small stuff and 20-60Nm for the bits which love the gronk