"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 14:31:45 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

I got one of those Stanley FatMax TLM 100 laser measures for Christmas,
and

Just out of curiosity, what would prompt a person to give an _editor_
a construction measurement tool, Ed? Been moonlightin', have ya?

The editor in question has several hobbies, of which the primary one is
keeping his 84-year-old house from falling apart. The house is winning, but
the editor has a plan. He'll let the termites do most of the demolition
work. Said editor also has re-roofed his house and detached garage and
rebuilt the walls of the garage, replacing all studs and sill plates.
Everything in the garage now is heavily poisoned to keep the termites from
fighting with the carpenter ants and making too much noise.

The editor also has, you know, in addition to a SB 10L lathe, a drill press,
two tablesaws, a bandsaw, a jointer, and large floor-mount disk sanders
powered by ancient motors (and has owned a knee mill and surface grinder in
years past), and has built a couple of small boats and a steam engine, not
to mention two racecars in decades long gone. He also has two lawnmowers, a
wife, and a dog. Practically everything in and out of the house has new
homemade bushings, where it has bushings, except for the wife and dog. Much
of my plumbing contains replacement parts that haven't been available for 50
years, but which I machined from old bronze prop shafts.

I've started to calibrate it. So far I've tested it at 3 ft., 6 ft., and
10
ft. It's consistently reading within +/- 1/16 in. versus my 30 ft. Stanley
Leverlock steel tape.

That's excellent. You'll find that hard to do within any given
assortment of steel tapes. One thing I learned early on in my
woodworking hobby (now career) was to always use the same tape on any
given project, especially things like built-ins and cabinetry. A 1/8"
variation between tapes is quite common.


So far this TLM 100 has been very useful and easy to use. I'm startled to
see how accurate it is. Stanley only guarantees it to +/- 1/4 in. My gut
feeling is that it's the same basic innards as the more expensive versions
(mine was $99), but that Stanley either de-rates this one to encourage
sales
of the more expensive models, or else they don't test the cheap version
and
leave the extra margin for manufacturing variations. If so, I got lucky.

I haven't yet played with laser measuring units, only laser levels.

---
The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction
when it could be turned into momentum.
--Frances Willard (1839 - 1898)
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