Thank you all for your posts, very interesting comments and opinions.
BaronJ, I appreciate the answers and pics, your height gauge design is unique/ obviously very functional and accurate.
Mikey, thank you for your post and also for your advice, the Patterson design does not call for that type clamp though , the idea of buying the scriber has already been brought up but I happen to enjoy salvaging through my part bins and also re-shaping or repurposing stuff so last night I actually found a nice rectangular 1/4" hss bit that would be perfect for the scriber.
The Paterson design does not call for cutting a jaw off the caliber nor removing the depth probe. The caliber, whether analog or digital, remains intact.....or am I missing something???
you're right , the reason I am following the Patterson design is so the caliper could perform the two functions as, A= a caliper and B= a DRO. just like you said :
the idea is to use a caliper temporarily as a height gauge, keeping it intact for regular duty after that.
We are talking about two totally different designs, the one Baron made has a dedicated DRO and it is not removeable as I understand.
I'm all set for now, I have all the parts that I need to complete the task.
Again I want to thank all of you for your thoughts and opinions, . definitely enjoyed reading your posts, learned a few thing in the process.