- Joined
- May 27, 2016
- Messages
- 3,469
You are right, of course, and surely the main "other" way is to have available a wide enough 36", or better still, 42" straight edge!Still, using a level to get a long surface flat and parallel is fraught with opportunities to accumulate errors, and so requires other ways to help with validating the results.
I do have a Chesterman No. 88R "Rustless", which is 36" long, 2" wide, ground steel straight edge with a "hang it up" hole in one end. It is only 0.0416" thick, so probably started out as 1/16" or maybe 3/64". Another, more sturdy type, is 24" long, and 1/8" thick, with one edge bevelled down to 1.32". I think these are the sort of thing mechanics use across an engine block.
They can be put up against a long surface, and probed with feeler gauges, though the longer one is too "floppy" for that game to be practical without a whole lot of trouble. Not the sort of thing you can use to "take a print" like the "lookcreations" dude does it on YouTube. Did I mention that I have nothing that "scrapes"?
I have to think this through, get up a better plan, and consider raiding my "machine stuff slush fund", a sort of home version of "skunkworks".
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