Are Economy or Grade B Gage Blocks Worth It?

once again Friday again yet no opening music or whatever right to it opening comment was bored the other day surfing the internet and stumbled across a picture of some jeweler files where they made their own handles and I was thinking you know I use jeweler files quite a bit they're very awkward to hold dangerous especially if you're trying to put them in the lay that's running you can go into your hands so you're trying to hold them and a angle to be safe so I was thinking why not you know make them out of metal why waste the material so I've got a piece of half-inch walnut dowel and you just stick it in the lathe and bang it out so they came out pretty good just do it with a file put the angle on it some decorative grooves and they're really easy to hold now I made a whole bunch of em where you use up the whole dowel foot and then the same way all my regular files I'm looking at them and they're always a pain because generic handles a specific hole the file doesn't fit in it it's wobbling it's not solid take all the files out of the drawer cost and drill the holes for each hammer the file into it they're all now very nice and I've loved working with them now before it's just yeah alright on this video I apologize for beating gauge blocks to death but and it started wondering to you know am I still an apprentice I've been doing this for about three years I should be beyond that now I know learning never stops but look up on you Google or whatever the definition of apprentice and all it says is an individual paid over a specific period of time to learn well unfortunately while I assumed that when you're learning it's because you're next to someone who knows what they're doing and here everybody that's in their own home shop unfortunately doesn't have an experienced person to learn from around them so what you got to do home chop people is you have to figure things out on your own and the best resource for that of course is YouTube so with the gage blocks you know still kind of up in the air or the right size or they not and so on in the comments saying you can't measure tents I go back on YouTube and I forgot the words of what I was searching for but I I wound up you know boom there's some videos there first one Oh wonderful it's just music and showing gage blocks great helpful second one well the title clearly was something about gage blocks but the entire video was the guy just showing off a lathe car like WTF but the the next one up was really good it was Pierre's garage and he was doing some comparisons on cheap versus expensive gage blocks and I said this should be good and the what he had was like a $3,000 set and then a cheap set and he was making stacks in comparing the two stacks to one another and that was definitely a key piece to getting me closer to figuring out what's going on so because I he had a larger than a 1 inch stack and I don't have anything accurate to measure that so he used a one-inch a 600,000 24 and a 100,000 can expense of set and then it cheeps that and then comparing the heights so I got rid of the one inch I just did a 600 a 124 and a 100 and measured them with the accurate micrometer and lo and behold it was on the money so that really set it off so first let me take you over to the bench and I'll just show you a little bit about the certificate thoughts of further research I wrote all this stuff in here from previous research but let me take it out of the plastic here so what I did was pull up this specification and there's one website which shows the table and I I guess for this certificate it clearly states great economy in the chart it also says great economy which is grade B and grade B has subgrades to it so you can if you see something on the internet gauge block set for sale that says great economy or grade B it's the same thing but what you really want to see is grade B has sub grades which is grade zero zero zero a s1 and s2 and each one of those grades is tighter tolerances or allows less deviation on each block in the set so if you're gonna buy you really want to see which sub grade it is that you're buying a s1 or s2 or 0 is 0 0 so I pulled up the document it's grade B the loosest grade 4 B is a s2 in other words it allows the most deviation and the maximum deviation for it for any one of these in this size it's up to I think it's I forgot I think it's up to fifty five five hundred thousands or something it's 24 so he look at this certificate and you go wait a minute there's the 28 29 25 this is beyond specification so right off the bat this certificate is bogus it has to be because it's singing in our grade B does it say what subgrade but if it's the word subgrade it's still beyond specification the only thing I can say is on the set I did look at one entire row the serial numbers to them and somebody is typing in the serial numbers because every block in that row does have the correct serial number listed so the other thing is every certificate that I've got to seen a picture of a banach really expensive high quality set on the internet for sale every certificate that this show there's handwriting on it either it's a date or it's usually a signature of who the inspector was so look at your certificate if there's no handwriting on it it's probably a fake certificate and I'll take you over to the computer and I'll show you something even further that says it's fake you know studying this thing a little bit further here great economy in 2017 mark tested them here in grade 2 in 2012 mark graded them here in 2014 grade as1 mark tested them all here in 2015 grade zero mark tested them all so in China I would expect the inspectors name to be Shang Wu Hong or something like that not mark and you can clearly one of these you can really see there's this Oh H ad mark Oh had so Mark's been a very busy guy for five years or so grading all the different grades of gauge blocks and now let me show you how to correctly read a micrometer because what happened was I'm looking at the specification of the non-digital type the one that you just rotate I'm looking at the spec saying and it's good to a tenth of a thousandth and I'm going how do you really read it and suddenly it dawned on me that there's a veneer on it so let me show you how to accurately read a tenth of a thousand on a micrometer using the veneer measuring through a tenth of a thousand is pretty easy with this mic this is the mid tutorial 1 0 1 - 1 1 7 but what you'll see is these numbers here are the actual thousands so if I were to dial in there's one hundred and one thousand so you can I hope you can see it but there's another set of numbers that are over here down in here what it is there's no measure one block here let's say let's take the point to block so wiping down pretty good microfiber with that side so I've already cleaned up the handle on this guy so what is that where the china label come from um all right and see if I get him clean it just grabbed it but that's why I'm wearing gloves cuz Fink when you're measuring to a tenth of a thousand everything counts ok so we'll stick him in there bring it up to two tents bring it in there really good slide it a little bit make sure it's locked down and then lock it so I think I'll take it out here maybe you could see it you can see that it's not that line is not exactly on the zero it's slightly up so what you do is you look at these other lines and you try to find the one that actually lines up with something so let me see here where it is ends up looks like the one maybe you can tell the one here is the only one of these lines that's actually hitting which means that's 1/10 so this black would be 200 thousands and 1/10 thick so that's how you do it and it's pretty pretty good and I don't think you I don't know if you can tell or I haven't really played with it to see if you can detect a half a tenth but yeah this Mike expect to a tenth of a thousandth and all you have to do is just pay attention to the other numbers so yeah you cannot use or once you really know the size of the block is truly a hundred thousandth while I put the block back on the thing and you spin it and it's not exactly on zero so what I figured out is I don't know why but it's not on zero so if you're just using the thousandth marks and you're trying to guess that all is probably a tenth of a thousandth up you can't because now if you spin it around to the venire section the only line that lines up is the zero which means the block is really basically a hundred thousand so it's operator trouble and on the digital one in the previous video I did on the gauge blocks why did the digital one match the regular one and when I said it was up a tenth of a thousand to be bum luck because the gauge wasn't zeroed correctly you can't Jam the thing together and then zero it out because now you're actually under and you can't have grease in there because you zero it out and now you're actually over so once you know what site what the size is of the item that you're measuring and I have a good micrometer and it said that gauge block was a hundred thousand now I put that gauge block in the digital one the mid tutorial and you have to keep futzing with it you measure it no it's too high you didn't zero it right big trouble so now you go back and try a different spot different force to zero at Intel finally now the digital one says the block is a hundred thousand so now I've got the analog one if you want to call it analog since the blocks a hundred thousand and the digital one says it's a hundred thousand so if I'm gonna just trust the set is correct and you would think about it you know I'm making a block that's 101 or tenth and then two times three times four times with your machining that you better be pretty much so on the money otherwise it's a joke so let me just show you some just measuring trusting the blocks all right hopefully I've got the camera in here as close and as good as I can doesn't look like there's reflections but if I were to say you know it's the mid tutorial from zero to one that's a thousand so this measure is tense when I try to get this to ring down here cuz there is some oil on it but this is the point one block and I've got it pretty much so set yeah yeah that dial it's crooked it's why so well you got to make the call on what you're seeing I adjusted this even though this arm is not the most stable thing that should be using to measure tenths of a foul but you can see here I've got it set to measure its if I assume that this block is exactly 0.1 I've got it set it's over zero out now if I take if you're manufacturing a point one zero zero one block you better be pretty close to it so let me get this guy down there if I'm going to start assuming that these blocks are accurate and I bring it up it should bring it up one tenth and it's very close to it I think I can get it on it now times I got it on it's hitting it looks like almost the same spot every time it's just under so let me try the one zero zero two so for an economy grade B a s two grades said for 90 bucks this is pretty good this should go up to 2/10 now and it's very close everyone I'm here is starting to come out under for some reason that's coming out even more under try that let's trade a five point one zero zero five I'll have to go back to the point one two just make sure it stayed put so this should go up a half and it's just under so interesting temperature can be affecting this I don't know what temperature it is but it's very cold here in the shop right now let's go back to the point one again was the point one might have been slightly over and yeah there it is seats under so it shifted because of this arm so I'm pretty sure these blocks are really pretty much so right on the money thought I'd set this up a little bit differently I found it rather interesting that you manufacture a stand a special stand a comparator stand which is extremely stable solid rigid specifically for the purpose of accurately measuring things but yeah he only make them for a dial indicator which is one of the least accurate things you can use to measure whatever but this is the point one block right again I'm not paying attention to temperatures yeah this is the partner come on I can't seat where are you well the point one slot is empty and I got to try to reach around the camera here to do that so what I'm thinking is just zero this out are you doing there solid all right can they get it to zero no there's the zero button yeah all right zeroed does it stay there yeah I can't play with that half the tenth pretty much though zero I think okay so let's put the point one zero zero one block under there all right and where are you gonna read it reads one tenth does it stay there or is that half a tenth gonna mess around and stay in there so that block is up one tenth let's try point one zero zero two underneath there where are you gonna read one zero zero two so and a last block I'm just gonna jump all the way up to five this is the point 1 0 0 5 block and I'm thinking you have to put the etching up because it might affect the reading and four and a half there's five five and a half so it's all over but because I'm thinking you know if you're gonna manufacture something that's to a tenth increment you better be really close to it so I'd love to figure out a way I've just got to make something that will hold a test indicator rather than a dial indicator and let's see if it still stays the point one block yeah it stays on zero for the most part so the indicator is pretty accurate here this dial guy if these gauge blocks are accurate and I think they are so so in conclusion if you're considering buying a gauge block set and it says great economy or grade B they're the same thing it's the bottom of the barrel you're not sure what you're gonna get I wouldn't trust the certificate in my opinion and if you want to measure them to see what you did get you needed micrometer that is capable or respective at of at least being capable of measuring a tenth of a thousandth and you need to read the micrometer right and you need to be very careful of contamination because in this video I did show measuring a two hundred thousand block and said that it was two hundred thousandth and one-tenth high I did when I was watching the editing say wait a minute I went back and remeasured it carefully and it was exactly two hundred thousand but if you think about the production line this has to be coming off a surface grinders must be a whole row of surface grinders and operators and you can't go to this guy and say I want you to create just grind a s one quality gauge blocks there just banging them out and it's going down a conveyor belt and it's probably getting laser etched and serialized at the grinder but somebody's doing a presort like that where he's just puts it up there app economy the economy goes on the economy conveyor belt down the line ooh somebody accidentally came up with an as1 quality goes in a different conveyor belt and so the ones that are 0 0 and 0 and a s 1 quality they're the ones that are going to a guy that's actually going to make a real certificate where he's enters the serial number and Jiri measures it and goes yes this is the deviation for this block and that time spent is labor and expense and that's no doubt why when you buy an as1 set it costs quite a bit more but just wanted to give you one last little caution here too on prices of economy grades and so on but heads up here's what I see on different price tags thought this was very interesting here's a starett 81 piece grade B and you look at it and that's the exact same label down here it says gauge blocks same colored box same hinge everything or that's five four hundred and seventy seven dollars or you combine the SPI set for two hundred and thirty four dollars and it's the exact same hinge brown box set same down here says gauge blocks economy set which is grade B two hundred and thirty four dollars or you can go to Amazon and here's the exact same set same brown box that I bought on the bench as you seen grade B for $90 so which one do you want to buy [Music]

Channel: Dave M

Views: 10,733

Rating: 4.4497356 out of 5

Keywords: the mini machine shop, mini mill, mini lathe, gage block testing, fake certicicate of calibration, jo-block, low cost gage blocks, cheap gage blocks, precision low cost gage blocks, HFS gage blocks, Chinese gage blocks

Id: -opM6z9WXXI

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018