Buy American,the job you save might be yours.
Anybody remember that slogan? Now the question is WHERE can I buy American. I get mad when I see old and once honorable names like Craftsman,Delta and others with a "Made in China" label on them. I bought all of my power tools,lathes,milling machine,bench grinder years ago when they were made in places like Kalamazoo and Pittsburg. My precision measuring tools are Starret,Brown&Sharp and a couple of George Scherr & Co items like a 14"Vernier caliper and a pre WW2 Mauser combination Vernier caliper and height gauge with the Scherr name on it. By the way, a DIAL caliper in NOT a Vernier but only a VERYNEAR caliper and the electronic ones are a waste of money IMHO. A set of "standards" to recalibrate the micrometers and check the VERYNEAR calipers with are mandatory and my preference IF they can be found are the Brown&Sharp circular types but the lineal ones are OK but not quite as easy to use.
Good files are a treasure IF they can be found and I use "hardware store"files to rough in with and the better German,Swiss and older English ones for detailing and I always look for this sort of thing at flea markets. The cheap files can be ground and altered to all kinds of shapes and I do it whenever I need to. I have been given some other seldom used tools like dividers and dial indicators by people who no longer need them and recently got some old but never used Lufkin adjustable parallels still in the boxes with the 1940 prices on them. It's impossible to have too many tools for any kind of endeavour and if you have a nice assortment,take care of them.
Bob Roller
