Being a "retiree" and not running a full time machine shop as a going business, I work with what I have at hand. I still use vernier height gauges on a black granite surface plate or on a scraped cast iron surface plate. I came up learning to read the verniers and it was all we had in the 60's. At the powerplant, we used digital and mechanical dial type height gauges. I have no qualms or objections to using the modern types of height gauges, just do not have enough need to go out and get one for my own shop. I have a no-name Japanese height gauge from the 60's, nice quality instrument. I also have a couple of Brown and Sharpe vernier height gauges up to 24".
Some years back, I started discovering that I needed to take my glasses off for reading and close work. For awhile there, I could read my verniers just fine without any help. As noted, it seems like the numbers and lines got smaller and blurrier with the years. I used an illuminated magnifier so there is no question as to what I am reading.
My own "acid test" for vernier reading happened years ago on a hydroelectric job. A large cast iron bull gear in a valve operating mechanism had broken during test operations (the factory man incorrectly set the limit switches). We needed that gear replaced for startup in a very few days. I said we could have a new bull gear made of plate steel by a local shop, and was told to go pursue that angle. I brought the chunks of the bull gear to the local machine shop, and they needed to know the shaft diameter. They handed me a 24" vernier and sent me back up the road to the jobsite (about 30 miles away) to get the shaft diameter.
The shaft was tucked inside a gearcase, and with a cover plate removed, was accessable- if you stood on a stepladder and wriggled in between a concrete wall and the gearcase. The millwright foreman was an older, heavyset man. He deferred to me to take the readings. So did all the other millwrights. I was the mechanical engineer on the job, management, so whether I should have been using the tools was a matter of who saw it happening. I took the readings three different times and they correlated. This was in December of 1985, so my eyes were still good for reading a vernier without magnification. I called the reading into the machine shop. They made the bull gear and worked through the night on it. They told me to come get it at on the evening it was done. I took it with me in a Power Authority Bronco with the heater running full blast. I was staying on the second floor of a motel. I threw an extension cord out the window and plugged in the jacket water heater on the engine of the Bronco. I lugged a 30" diameter steel bull gear up the stairs and into the bathroom of my motel room. Through the night, I'd waken and turn on the heat lamp (on a timer) in the bathroom to keep that gear warm. During the night the temperature outside fell to about -10 F with some wind to help matters. At 5:30 AM I went down and started the Bronco, and got the heater in it going full blast. After breakfast in the motel, I wrapped the gear in blankets and lugged it down to the Bronco and loaded it. I rushed it to the jobsite, and the millwrights got it down into the hydro plant- still warm.
The gear went on too hard, so we stopped trying to get it onto the shaft. I called the machine shop. The fellow laughed and said: "Don't take this the wrong way, Joe. I had the machinists bore that gear about 0.002" tight in case you were off a little on your vernier reading. Looks like you were not off. Bring the gear right back and we'll clean up that bore." So, we wrapped the gear in the blankets and ran it up the stairs and into my Bronco... back to town and into the machine shop. The owner had his machinists place the gear in the coolant tank on their Blanchard Grinder for maybe 30 minutes. He said the temperature of the coolant on the Blanchard (not working at that time) was normalized to ambient temperature in the shop, and would normalize the gear temperature a lot quicker than sitting in the air. After thirty minutes, they put the gear in a big Monarch lathe and cleaned 0.002" out of the bore. Same crazy drill to get it back to the hydro plant before it chilled down. It went on with a little force, just right.
I still remember asking the millwright foreman and his men to take the vernier readings and they all kind of laughed and said: "Joe, you're an engineer and machinist and you are younger than us and have better eyes... you do it." I have a 24" Mitutoyo vernier in my shop that I use occasionally. When I bring it on a job, people look at it and ask how you read it. Most people have never had to read a real vernier. In high school, the only kind of vernier caliper we had was a true vernier. No dial caliper. Some of the other students whose fathers or uncles were machinists or toolmakers fixed those guys up with Helio dial calipers. Slick, or so it seemed. In those days, a Helios 6" dial caliper cost about 14 or 15 bucks, which was more than I could afford. A classmate whose dad was a toolmaker brought in a "Mauser" type vernier to sell me. It was a basic vernier with the "Mauser" type thumb lock, made by "Zeus". I still have it in my chest some 50 years later. I use it occasionally when the batteries in my Starrett digital caliper decide to play games, or just for old times sake. I had a Mitutoyo Brazilian made dial caliper that I treated myself to a few years back. Took it on a job and it got dropped on concrete. Never replaced it. 75 bucks shot to hell just that quick. Seemed like I was getting told to keep using the old vernier. I also use a Starrett vernier bevel protractor, so reading verniers is something I just keep on doing. As a college student, I took an elective course in surveying. In those days, we used the "20 second engineer transit" and the Wild T-2 Theodolite. Both of these instruments required reading vernier plates. We did it, and we used pocket magnifiers to be sure of our readings on the transits. In HS we started off with the slide rule, no pocket calculators existed, let alone computers. Again, it was a matter of using what amounted to another version of a vernier. We did regular multiplication and division as well as pulling trig functions off our slide rules. Used the slide rule thru engineering school as well.
For the times I came up in, verniers and slide rules were what we had and what we used. I never cease to marvel at any of the digital instruments, whether in the form of measuring instruments, total station surveying instruments, electronic levels, laser alignment systems, or pocket calculators. Knowing what it takes to do the work the old ways, and having lived thru a few years and end of that era, I am perhaps more appreciative of the new technologies than a lot of people. On the other hand, having a sense of the actual process and numbers, I can tell when a digital instrument may not have been setup properly or zeroed properly as the resulting reading will tell me as much. That is where knowing the old ways and having a sense of the numbers (for want of a better term) gives us old dinosaurs a bit of an advantage. Sure, if someone handed me a nice digital height gauge or offered to put DRO on my machine tools as some contest prize, I'd welcome it. I'd be a fool to turn it down and continue squinting and using magnifiers and doing all the old types of maneuvers like keeping track of table moves using the micrometer collars when the moves amount to some inches and decimals thereof. I enjoy working with the old stuff, as noted above, and I still do my figuring on paper when I can;t do it in my head. I carry around most decimal equivalents in my memory along with common shop math formulas and engineering constants for things like the modulus of elasticity of steel, the density of steel and concrete and water, and the coefficient of expansion of steel... and a lot more stuff of that nature. Coming up in the times I did, we had to know the decimal equivalents in our heads and be able to do fractional and decimal shop math quickly, with regular quizzes. I like to work problems in my mind like how much a bridge deck or length of steel rail might grow on a hot day, or how much a part will expand or shrink for a shrink fit, or what the hoop stress in a shrink fitted collar might be. I may round off numbers but I get a result that is fairly close to the calculated value. Us oldtimers were trained to use our heads and eyes in an era when nothing existed to take their place like digital readouts or calculators. I like having that ability, and it is almost like parlor magic to tell someone how long a time remains on a road trip to reach a given destination, within 5 minutes, or how far off the lightning is when you hear the thunder (knowing the velocity of sound and counting seconds). Using one's mind for this kind of little exercise is so uncommon nowadays that people sometimes seem astounded when I come out with these kinds of answers to questions they haven't asked. It goes with reading a micrometer or vernier the old way. Keeping your mind and senses sharp.
, but they work fine for my jobs. Setting them up with a last-word indicator and a test block speeds up their use a little.
