Shop Talk 10: Telescope Gages & How They're Used

welcome to another episode of shop Talk my name is Adam today we're going to talk about telescoping gauges some people like to call these snap gauges also but I call them telescoping gauges I've had a lot of requests from viewers and in comments about going over some different measuring tools and one of them being telescope gauges so I wanted to go ahead and talk about those and one of the one of the purposes of talking about this and sharing this with you is I have a lot of people that ask me about my technique on how to use them and what my opinion is so I have my technique that I that I use whenever I use a telescoping gauge and one of the points that I want to get across to my viewers is that I'm not trying to teach you the perfect way to use a telescope gauge because everybody's got their own way to use it I've got my way that I've developed my dad taught me how to use a telescope gauge but I kind of develop my own feel for it and my own technique on how I like to put it in a bore and pull it out I've been using telescope gauges for 19 years now and they work good there's I hear comments from people saying that they're not an accurate tool and you sit and rely on them you should you use other tools such as bore gauges try mics inside mics things like that those are the tools have their purposes in the shop as well but for everyday use when you're born out parts and a lathe or in the middle or wherever telescope gauge is a perfectly fine tool to use once you develop the proper feel for it and the proper feel with a micrometer we're going to talk about that too we're going to go over them use one of my mics and I'm going to show you how I put a telescope gauge down in into a bore how I pull it out and how I hold it with the mic whenever I check it and the amount of pressure that I put on it whenever I'm reading the telescope gates so I've got a piece of tube here we'll use this as some of that real nice-like DLM tube so it should be a nice smooth board that we can measure I've also got a piece of brass there I was looking for something like a honed ID tube and I can't find anything down here in my shelf so I know I'd like to get the camera and maybe chuck up that brass in the monarch and just take a nice little skim cut and then show you we'll talk about how I measure a bore when I'm in the lathe over there kind of give you a you know working perspective of it so let's move the camera down here we'll talk about this for just a minute and then we'll go into some techniques so the first thing that we'll mention is that there's basically two types of telescope gauges and these are all my good sets that I that I've got out here this is a set made by General and then this is your stare at set this is the one that you normally see me using as this one right here and this is another set that was actually my dad's so it's kind of passed down to me I don't know a name but I just know it's it's made in USA so the two types is we'll start with the general set you have you have a single leg where one of your one of your legs here are fixed it doesn't move the other one plunges inside the other okay so you have a single legged style I don't know if that's the general term that's just what I call them of course you got your starett this starett makes them in both styles you can get either one and I prefer the single legged style and then you got this style here too which is the dual you know the two-legged style where both sides move and some people prefer these over the single-leg style I just have always liked the feel of the single-leg style better than these I guess because only one arm one arm is moving versus the style you got two of them that's moving around on you but then again when I rise started early on this was the set right here that I started with and I I used them all the time so I just kind of became familiar with this style and really liked it and always went to it this whole general set and it's still a good set I keep it in the drawer but I asked that a while back it's been years now I was like dad will you get me a I want to set a stereo to telescope engages and and so he got me a set of telescoping gauges we'll go ahead and look at the number real quick while we're talking about it number s 229 G is this set right here okay so that's your that's your two styles of telescoping gauges and one other thing that I will mention stare it you can you can get different links of this from stearic so at work I've got this same set actually it's the double legged style at work but they have a 12 inch they have a 12 minutes reach on them and I believe they make them I believe this is the 4 inch and they have them in like 6 8 10 and 12 so the the 12 minutes come in handy every now and you got to get way down inside something such as like a one of those real deep pump housings that's got a bearing fit all the way down in the back of it you can use one of those so it really easily reach way down in there you know and get your measurement because you got you got that long reach you get an air and get your measurement with it alright so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about my technique on how how I use these alright so I got the piece of tube and set up in this little vise here to try to give you a little better angle what I'm trying to show you so this will be our telescope gauge that we use right here to measure this and what I'm trying to what I'm trying to show you is is my field I've seen people stick a telescope gauge up in a bore just any just any way even like sideways or crooked like that you know and pull it out just like that not giving any more thought to it and take a measurement and not even double-check it but I've never liked I can go side to side like this and get good measurements but what I prefer to do is go up up and down like that I like to be vertically up and down most of time whenever I'm doing my measurements if I'm in a lathe or if I'm over in the bore of male boar and something out so you know something like that I really don't like to go and crooked like that or just reach up in here and just do like that I've just never been able to get a good measurement like that and I don't like the way it feels and I don't trust that so whenever I stick a telescope gauge in there I'm usually got my left hand over the park such as this and I'm going to stick it in there go ahead and collapse it stick it in there and then loosen it and then what I'm doing is I'm pivoting on the bottom of the telescope gauge don't want to pivot there so you want to kind of wiggle it a little bit to get it self centered you want to Center it up and then snug it don't over tighten it and then usually what I like to do is I put my right hand under it and I take my left thumb and I push it down lightly until it just falls like that now sometimes I'm not careful and it falls and it kind of bumps the part and I'll recheck it but that's typically how I like to do it I do it so much I really don't even think about it to get it centered up and I just drop it out like that a lot of people they just like to use one hand and they go in there like this and they group and they pull it out and that might work for them there's nothing wrong with that again I was just trying to show you my technique because I keep having people ask me about it so let's uh let's go ahead and go down to the lathe I'm feeling more comfortable standing there - lathe and giving you a little better shot of how I'm going to measure this stuff I think we'll just go ahead and I think we'll just use this tube right here because it'll be round that brass I'll have to skin that out we got our test piece chucked up so that what that is is a piece of to about two and a half D om tube nice smooth bore in there I don't know if it's perfectly round but this should work for our demonstration purposes here so you know we go in there we make a cut I'm in there checking it so this is this is what I do go in there and loosen it tilt it back some you don't want to tilt it too far try to get it centered up and snug it lightly and then you see I'm taking my left on I'm going to go ahead and put my right hand under it I'm going to catch it just like that and then I'm going to check it with my mic and we'll talk about this too on how I how I'll hold the mic I'm getting let's say it's like about one and a half thousand under we'll give it another check same measurement one and a half okay so you see how I'm doing it it just feels comfortable to me to do that I just I use my left thumb and I'll push it down I feel like I get a better feel of the the sliding action of the arms there when I'm doing this and it feels like whenever I'm doing this I may be pulling it to one side or the other now I can get a measurement like that but this is my preferred technique just like this okay so getting about the same measurement so let me move this camera a little bit and we'll talk about how to hold the mic alright so after I get in here and I get my I get my fuel with the telescope gauge this is how I this is how I hold everything so I'm going to hold the telescope gauge like this in my left hand and I'm going to sit it on the fixed anvil part of the the mic right there okay I'm going to use my middle finger and my thumb and I'm going to basically like hold it Center on there alright and then you see where I've got my pointy finger up here just kind of cradling it to support it so I got three fingers supporting the telescope gauge got the mic in my right hand holding it like this going to use your pointy finger to adjust the barrel and I am NOT going to use the friction thimble I never use a friction thimble on a telescope gauge I want to just feel it feel it touch alright so we're going to come in there I'm going to Center it up with my two fingers there my thumb and my middle finger and I'm going to run that barrel down and I'm rocking it back and forth like this until I just feel it start touching it and what I'm looking for is just a touch and I don't want to I don't want to squeeze down on it but I'm just feeling it touch and just lightly adjust in that barrel until you have it to where it'll basically stay like that but it'll just fall out okay now that when I got a little bit of a different measurement I got three under on that one right there but I wanted to show you that's that's how I hold the mic and the telescope gauge no matter what size it is the smaller one's probably a little different but the bigger ones you know I just hold it just like that and come in there and got two under on that one right there now use these things every single day and they've never let me down I was going to tell you a quick little story you know about this the way I was doing it just like this I was that I was that one of the motor shops this was years ago and I had to measure in in Bell and I had my own tools you know brought my own tools over there and I was doing this you know I was check it except I remember it was a bigger I was using the big telescope gates so somewhere between five and six cents probably and I was doing just like this you know getting my measurements and somebody had come up to me and said you're not doing that right and I said what do you mean I'm not doing it right he says you're using a micrometer you're supposed to ratchet down on with the friction thimble that's how we do it I said well that's not how I do it that's not how I was taught and that's not how I've ever done it and he was basically trying to tell me like what you're getting a false reading because you're not reading your mic correctly so all I said was how many times you guys got to bring in bills back because I got to fit wrong they never do I mean it was it never happened so everybody develops their own feel it's a it's an important part of being a machinist or being in the metal trade where you're using micrometers yes you need to learn to use the proper fuel but everybody is going to have their their own touch and feel to it you give you give this to the next machinist and he may be one or two tenths off from what you're reading just because of how you feel but if you learn the proper feel you can use a telescope gauge and a micrometer and it'll be dead nuts all day long so that's my little take on how I use a telescoping gauges and once again I just want to remind you guys that my point with this is to you know to help somebody with this because we have a lot of people ask about it but again remember that I'm showing you my way of doing it and I'm in no way saying that my way is the right way to do it or the preferred way or the only way to do it it's just the field that I developed and it's how I use the tools and it works well for me so if it works well for you use my techniques if it doesn't then develop your own technique just try to remember a couple key things you know making sure that it's well centered and not don't over tighten this whenever you go to pull it out of there and don't over tighten your micrometer down onto it whenever you're measuring so hopefully that will help and thanks everybody for for watching I hope you enjoyed we're going to go to some more topics here in the shop we did how we did have a lot of requests for going over you know basic use on how to read a micrometer and other other tools around here so we need to go into that also leave me a comment if you want to see something else here in the shop that we can go over and shop talk and until then I'll see you on the next episode

Channel: Abom79

Views: 98,530

Rating: 4.9590483 out of 5

Keywords: abom79, telescope gages, telescoping gage, snap gage, snap gages, measuring tools, starrett, starrett tools, starrett machinist tools, machinist tools, micrometers, machinist, machine shop, general tools, general telescope gage, how to measure a bore, measuring bores, bore measurments

Id: R6YLK0F3ytc

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2016