"Ken Cutt" wrote in message
...
snip---


For practical home shops is there any advantage to using wires instead
if a thread Mic ? The cheap imports look a lot more convienient .
Ken Cutt


I don't like thread mikes. Never have, although they are fine for home
usage, probably even so good as to be considered over-kill. My personal
preference is to use wires, not even triangles. Both thread mikes and
triangles have the potential to measure a thread off the pitch diameter when
there's the slightest error in thread form. That's not true with wires.
All of this is probably not all that important as long as you're not trying
to sell threads under government contract, which is where I acquired all my
"bad" habits. In spite of the fact that I closed my commercial shop over
20 years ago, the years of running government contract work still steers my
thinking to this day. I've long maintained that if you choose methods
that are accepted by industry/government, that you'll achieve a level of
excellence that is difficult to challenge, and have a yield that is
consistently better than those that don't. It's worked for me for years, so
I hesitate to abandon my ways. It's hard to relax, and I don't know that
I really want to because it's no more difficult to work to exacting
standards than to be a hack if you always practice working in what I
consider to be a better way. Therefore, I stay the coarse, using wires.
I don't find them any more difficult to use than thread mikes, which, to me,
have a terrible feel. (Proper) wires can be used for calibrating gages,
thread mikes can not. That alone speaks volumes about their ability to
provide erroneous readings.

Harold