Recommend me calipers?

[bikemutt]

Mitutoyo. I bought my first one on eBay, then found another used at a pawnshop for a song.

Two complaints; no auto-off, no low battery alert.

Having two of them to cross-check has me convinced they are consistent, accurate and usefully sensitive.

 

[SamT1]

I could never get my HF ones to read the same twice. Incredibly frustrating trying to set length.

I bought a box of random reloading junk off the FB trader a few years ago. I wanted the bag of #4 shot in the box. The rest looked like trash. There was a set of rusty 30-30 dies, some bushings for a Lee load all, a bag or 2 of wads, and somewhere in the bottom I found the pair of mitutoyos a couple months later when I decided to unpack my goodie box. Bought it for $25.

 

[Walkalong]

I never found their dial calipers consistently accurate to .001". Their digital calipers used to be good .

My bad, I meant digital.

 

[mcb]

Easy to read quickly for old eyes?

Digital calipers also have no rack and pinion to get clogged with debris or wear out.

 

[jmorris]

The most beneficial aspect of digital calipers is differential measurements. There is no math, just span the part and hit zero, now and movement and subsequent reading will be relative from the zeroed part.

Keep spare batteries around because they will be dead when you need them the most. I have lots of different ones from very expensive to one plastic set of vernier calipers that cost $.99.

Vernier calipers are by far the most durable and are much less expensive than the others. They have one drawback in that unless you grew up using a slide rule, and even if you did your eyes are not as good now as they were then, so they are difficult to use. The only ones I use now are the really long ones just because a 48 inch dial caliper is quite expensive.

For reloading you don’t need to spend a lot of money a $10 set of HF calipers will do everything the B&S or Mitutoyo except make your wallet lighter.

I suggest everyone own a set of standards and you can check them all side by side if you want to.




One thing you need to make sure of with digital calipers is that the foam in the box doesn’t hit the on/off button when you close it.

If it does you will turn them off and then turn them right back on so the next time you come back to use it the battery is dead and you think the caliper eats batteries when it’s just been on for the last two weeks.

 

[Offfhand]

Beware buying high end instruments such a Mitutoyo calipers if the price is too good to be true. eBay has recently listed Mitutoyo Absolute Digimatic calipers under $50.00. They are described as new, with prepaid shipping..from CHINA. The China source is clue enough that they are fake, which has turned out to be the case. The consulting firm I work for (part time now) recently tested some of these suspected fake Mitutoyo calipers and found a number of ways to determine they are fraudulent. The first and most obvious is the fakes read only to three decimal places whereas the real ones read to four. There are other differences when real and fake are compared side by side. My firm also investigated "Zeiss" rifle scopes offered on eBay at ridiculously low prices, same story, made in China. Just remember, if the price is too good to be true, it is.

 

[Equestrian]

Shars makes some better mid grade stuff than the cheapest import units, but starett, mitutoyo, etc are still the kings

 

[GT1]

For our reloading tasks anything over a 20 dollar bill spent is likely 5 or 10 bucks too much. The digital are quick to read, best benefit of them. I'm still on the first set of the FA calipers, it is consistent and matches my fowler dial calipers that I rarely use and mostly to check the FA set.

 

[Ireload2]

I am a long time professional user of Mitutoyo calipers at work going back to the 1970s. I really like the 8" versions and have used them at 4 different companies.
However at home I have used a common Chinese 6" model purchased from Midway about 25 years ago for $19.99. The cheapies from Midway have worked perfectly and they are very accurate based on checking them with micrometer standards up to 4".

 

[NWPilgrim]

I've been using Cabela's digital calipers a few years now and really like them. I used RCBS dial calipers for more than 20 years, but more and more I need to do fine measurements of unknown items (not just reloading) in millimeters. Actually on my second RCBS caliper as I dropped the first one after about 15 years and knocked it way out of alignment.

The digital calipers make it easy to measure in inches or mm. I've quit using the dial calipers and just use the digital for now. The Cabelas version has auto on/off. Anything electronic is likely to be much cheaper/better several years down the road when the current device wears out. And I'll always have my dial calipers as back up. Unless you are benchrest shooting, I'm not sure how beneficial it is to have absolute guaranteed +/- .0005" accuracy. Handguns certainly aren't going to matter that precisely, and 99% of rifles have other variations much greater than that. So it would be great to have a fine quality instrument but for reloading that is more of a want/preference than a "need". I probably over paid but I was in Cabelas when I remembered I wanted a mm/inch caliper and it was handy so at $35 it went home. On the other hand, it is one tool I use constantly and if it lasts 20 years or more then the cost of a high quality caliper ($100 or more) amortized over that period is like $5/yr. Still a great deal.

 

[jmorris]

I'm not sure how beneficial it is to have absolute guaranteed +/- .0005" accuracy.

I agree, not to mention if you need that kind of accuracy and are using a caliper, you are using the wrong tool you need to be using micrometers.