Ian White Wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:57:42 GMT, DavidM wrote:

There seem to be quite a few in the diy sheds. Do they produce a
thin enough line for decent accuracy (2mm),

The £20 one with leveling base and tripod I have has aline width of
about 2mm but also a narrow dark line down the middle.

and how easy are they for getting a true vertical or horizontal?

Verticals still use a plumb bob but project that onto the wall with
the laser. Probably not much of an issue in a modern plasterboarded
box with flat walls but one of our bedroom walls is so bowed that to
get the 6' plumb line to hang freely it had to be at the end of a 2"
nail at the top and the weight was 4" away from the wall, the line
just clear of the bulge... The laser made it a doddle to accurately
transfer the vertical to the wall.

The accuracy of the bubbles and ease of use of the leveling head
leaves a little to be desired but to put a line around a room for a
border or dado rail it's worth spending the time as you are guaranteed
to get a plane not a spiral...

I'm sure numbers of people are hovering to buy, so please can we name
specific models that do (or don't) work well?


--
Ian White

If you are levelling around a room I would really just use a good
quality spirit level, at least 1200mm long, and flip the level around
each time you mark the line so as to cancel out any innacuracies within
the level. I've used severall cheap laser's and I still dont think you
can beat a good spirit level used carefully. I've wasted so much time
trying to set up and re set up lasers, then checking and double
checking then finding its "out" a bit, re checking , re marking etc etc
etc. You get my drift. Do it carefully with a spirit level and you know
its right.
For distance levelling I always use a water level, again if you take
care it is 100% accurate, no question, and it'll go around corners,
into niches , cupboards etc.
I dont think you need to look towards new "fads" when the old ways do
the job as well if not better.


--
Nick H