Spent 4 hours today trying to dial in a perfect reveal on a shaker door because my new dial calipers were off by 0.015 inch.

Old calipers I had for 15 years worked fine, but the new digital ones from Amazon were giving me false readings and I didn't catch it until after I already cut 8 doors wrong has anyone else had brand new tools throw off their work like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.val1mo ago

A buddy had a new tape measure that was actually 1/16th too long. Drove him nuts for a whole weekend.

adams.uma1mo ago

Honestly, that sounds more like a manufacturing defect than something that could actually be off by that amount. Tape measures are stamped and calibrated in factories, so a 1/16th inch error over a standard 25 foot tape would mean the whole thing was cut wrong from the start. Ngl, your buddy probably just had a tape that got stretched or twisted somehow, maybe from being dropped or stored in a hot truck. Tbh, I'd check if the hook end was bent a little before blaming the whole tape.

laura_chen411mo ago

Got new digital calipers from Amazon a few months back and they read 0.010 off on the first test piece I measured. Ended up wasting almost a full sheet of plywood before I grabbed my old calipers to double check and caught the error. Now I always test new measuring tools against a known standard before I trust them on anything important. You tried checking yours against a gauge block or even a good ruler?