@middle.road : Hee Hee - I am still trying to figure it. A pillar drill - right?
My freebie granite still awaits a suitable height gauge to match it's quality.
A while back, I picked up a auction deal off eBay for about £27, being two gauges, one in a wooden box. One was Shardlow, and the other a Chesterman, now known as Rabone Chesterman. It came with a cylindrical precision 1.5" calibration gauge.The Shardlow needed repair. Some ham-fisted git had turned the adjuster knob on the back while it was locked in precision worm gear mode with such force it sheared the two 1/16" pins in the keyway.
New territory for me, I took it apart, refurbished it, pushed out the two pins, and made up some new ones. The several carbide scribers that came with it all were clearly quality, and in great condition, but not the right height to set all the way down to the surface.
Then I found -->
THIS
Given that these gauges go for around £40 for a single beat-up used, with most around £75 for one a bit less beat up, £100-£150 for various new, and the quality fancy Mitutoyo at about $450, I think I did OK. The eBay 25mm high carbide scriber leaves only 0.4mm to calibrate out. I will set it down on "driveway freebie", and move the verniers to zero it. There looks to be enough calibrate shift to be able to do it. At worst, I can turn 25mm into 25.4mm by raiding my feeler gauge set, and have 0.4mm feeler donate some of itself, re-purposed into a shim spacer.
Slowly, steadily, I am acquiring the basic stuff to do anything precision. The granite block on a stand is a huge boost to that end.