Rulers - or rules.

[Cheshirechappie]

For donkey's years, I've done all my woodwork measuring with two tools, a 12 foot Stanley tape and a 6" steel rule.

Maybe the rule is a habit ingrained by my engineering background, but I just couldn't function without it, now! Mine's a Rabone Chesterman 64R 'rustless chrome face'; I think they're still available under the Stanley name. It's such a versatile little tool, having both imperial and metric measurements. Apart from the usual marking-out duties (when dimensions are not taken directly from another component ot tool) it comes in handy for all sorts - depth gauge when morticing, quick stock thickness checker, that sort of thing. I used it recently to set out the 10tpi i wanted when recutting a panel saw from 6tpi - attached to the saw-vice with a couple of bits of masking tape, it was easy to transfer the marks from rule to plate with a small file, moving the rule along every 4" or so. It would do 8, 16 and 20 tpi just as easily, and (as Paul Sellers demonstrated a few weeks ago) 12tpi and 6tpi by using the metric side - 2mm and 4mm is as near as a saw needs.

About 18 months ago, I bought a 36" folding boxwood rule off a well-known interweb auction site. It's much easier to read than either the tape or the little 6", and suits the scale of most woodwork. I suspect that had I worked with it from the off, I'd be bereft without it, but for some reason I still grab either the tape or the 6". Maybe it's just ingrained habit.

What are the forum's preferences? Do you find a 6" rule indispensible, or prefer a 12", or a folding boxwood rule? Do you find a tape measure does all you need?

 

[Racers]

I have 6"/150mm 12"/300mm 24"600mm and 36"1000mm rules that I use for marking out, all Fisher ones very nice matt Stainless Steel.
Tapes are o/k for rough work but every thing else I use rules.

Pete

All ways wanted a 2000mm one but they are expensive.

 

[bugbear]

The historic tools are either a 2 foot folding steel rule, or a 3 foot "4 fold" wooden rule.

For the small scale stuff I tend to do, I use a 12" steel rule, but I work in mm.

BugBear

 

[monkeybiter]

Steel rule [6" and 12"], steel tape, dial calliper. Which one depends on dimension and accuracy required.

 

[niagra]

As I make drums, I also have a flexible tape to check circumferences.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

As I make drums, I also have a flexible tape to check circumferences.

That's a point - I don't do much curved work, but I can see how a flexible tape would help in (for example) checking the required length of veneer for a bow-front cabinet drawer. It's more direct and less prone to error than using a piece of string to find the length, and then laying it along a tape measure. I've got a tailor's cotton tape kicking about the house somewhere, but it had never crossed my mind that it might be handy in the workshop. Nice one!

 

[John15]

150, 300, 600 and 1000mm stainless steel rules and a 3m Stanley tape

John

 

[iNewbie]

As I make drums, I also have a flexible tape to check circumferences.

That's a point - I don't do much curved work, but I can see how a flexible tape would help in (for example) checking the required length of veneer for a bow-front cabinet drawer. It's more direct and less prone to error than using a piece of string to find the length, and then laying it along a tape measure. I've got a tailor's cotton tape kicking about the house somewhere, but it had never crossed my mind that it might be handy in the workshop. Nice one!

Starrett make some Full Flexible steel rules - the largest being 24" which is 1/64th thick. Costs about £100 mind... :shock:

 

[Peter Sefton]

I have 6"/150mm 12"/300mm 24"600mm and 36"1000mm rules that I use for marking out, all Fisher ones very nice matt Stainless Steel.
Tapes are o/k for rough work but every thing else I use rules.

Pete

All ways wanted a 2000mm one but they are expensive.

I have been using fisher for years by far my favourite brand, The old ones that have lost there crispness get used for removing glue or gum veneer tape without the risk black staining. I like having a 150mm in my top pocket and 300mm for my bench work, 600 and 1000mm for setting out.

I use my Incra T rule for spacing dovetails or as a pencil gauge and a Incra precision rule for bending around curved work.

I have a Stanley 8M tape for timber prep and a digital vernier calliper for final sizing. I have given up with manual and dial callipers.

If the temptation for the 2M rule becomes to strong Pete give me a ring and I will see what I can do.

 

[-Matt-]

Depending on where I am:
150mm steel rule in trouser leg pocket
300mm steel rule (I also have a black one with white markings, but thats double sided and doesn't have a conversion chart/ tapping sizes on the back)
300mm combination square
5M Stanley Tylon/Tyron (something) tape. Had it few months, not a mark on the tape yet, very pleased with it.
Assortment of cheap 5M tapes. Took a few to work. They didn't last too long. Bit crap. Was a job lot of about 12 from an auction.
Manual slidey 150mm verniers. Can't get on with dial ones. We have digital ones at work. More to go wrong really.
Dividers too I guess. I've used those for measuring and transferring of measurements.

 

[bourbon]

My mom (who I lost last year) used to work for Rabone Chesterman. Birmingham museum has a duplicating machine as one of their exhibits. The staff were put out when mom said to them that it was put together wrongly, she should have known as she worked it!! I still have a 'blank' 2 foot rule that I use as a straight edge most often though a Stanley tape and 12 inch rule and a scale ruler for modelmaking

 

[DTR]

I have a 6" and a 12" engineers rules in the tool chest, but they don't get much use other than as a straight edge. They are "surplus" from my days as an apprentice. I also have a 2' boxwood rule and a 16' tape measure. Most of the time they only get used for coarse measurements; when I need to be accurate as much as possible I measure straight from a component or use dividers or a marking gauge

 

[Racers]

I have 6"/150mm 12"/300mm 24"600mm and 36"1000mm rules that I use for marking out, all Fisher ones very nice matt Stainless Steel.
Tapes are o/k for rough work but every thing else I use rules.

Pete

All ways wanted a 2000mm one but they are expensive.

If the temptation for the 2M rule becomes to strong Pete give me a ring and I will see what I can do.

Mmm tempting, any idea how much?

One thing I like about the Fisher rules is they are matt and you can mark the rule with a pencil, which is good for dyslexics like me who can read things wrong with out knowing.

Pete

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Old engineer's rules are often marked in 20th's of an inch, which is annoying when you mistake them for 16th's. DAMHIKT

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Old engineer's rules are often marked in 20th's of an inch, which is annoying when you mistake them for 16th's. DAMHIKT

That's a good point - but it's not limited to engineer's rules. My boxwood folding rule (Rabone No.1380) is calibrated in 1/8" and 1/10" increments on one side, and 1/16" and 1/12" on the other.

(What would you use 1/12" increments for? I wonder if they just put it on because they had to put something there, and couldn't think of anything more useful - already got 1/8", 1/16" and decimal divisions.)

 

[AndyT]

1/12" divisions would be handy if you were doing a drawing or making a model at one inch=one foot scale.

Also useful for a typist - 12 lines to the inch was a standard that survived into early dot matrix and daisy wheel printers.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Wish I could find a steel ruler with mm on both sides (well all four edges if you see what I mean) and just mm, they all seem to have half mm normally for the first 100mm which just give me a headache

 

[Cheshirechappie]

1/12" divisions would be handy if you were doing a drawing or making a model at one inch=one foot scale.

Also useful for a typist - 12 lines to the inch was a standard that survived into early dot matrix and daisy wheel printers.

The Prof hits the mark yet again! Andy - you're absolutely right.

I've just been doing a bit of googling. Apparently, the printing industry used (maybe still uses) 'picas' and 'points' as measurement units - there are 6 printer's picas and 72 printer's points per 0.99576". There are also DTP (desk top publishing) picas and points; in this case 6 picas and 72 points equal 1" exactly. So it's easy to see how 1/12" divisions would be of use in the print industry.

Specialist rules for printers marked in picas and points are still available - though not widely so!

You learn something every day, don't you?

There must have been quite a few special rules for particular trades. I have a couple of patternmaker's contraction rules, made with scales deliberately a fraction larger than standard inches to enable patternmakers to set out their work to allow for the contraction of metals as they cooled from molten in the mould. Those were available in quite a range of contraction rates, some allowing for 'double contraction', when the patternmaker made the wooden patterns from which metal production patterns were cast for high-volume work. Different metals contract by different amounts, and different sizes of casting could contract differently too - so two foundries casting iron might use different contraction allowances. The end result was that there were many different rules made by instrument makers for patternmakers.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Wish I could find a steel ruler with mm on both sides (well all four edges if you see what I mean) and just mm, they all seem to have half mm normally for the first 100mm which just give me a headache

Know what you mean - it's the same with imperial. I can just about cope with 1/32", but 1/64", 1/50" and 1/100" are just ridiculous!

I don't know if they're still available, but there used to be something called (rather rudely, I thought) 'blind man's rules', which didn't bother with the smaller divisions - the smallest were 1/8" if I recall correctly. Perfectly adequate for 95% of woodwork ( and a lot of metalwork, too). I've never seen a metric one, but I'll bet there out there somewhere....

 

[AndyT]

Hi CC. I was wildly guessing on the twelfths and don't really know. I think for an old boxwood rule of more than a foot or so, scaling is the more likely purpose and I've seen pictures of rules with twelfths on described as scale rules. The near match to printing is a bit of a coincidence. Printers needed to be very accurate when setting up a composing stick to a predetermined measure and I have recently acquired a set of brass gauges that were used for that job.