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Viability and technique for ring gage repair

seve7

Aluminum
Joined
Feb 18, 2018
Location
Troy MI
So a pawn shop i occasionally stop in had a massive set of ring gages. probably about 25 of them in a complete set between .5000 and 2.0000, problem being, that had a decent amount of rust on the bores. i've had some success repairing stuff with evaporust and then a short citric acid bath. curious if they are worth saving, to be used for rough gages after a quick ball or brush hone or if i will push their roundness to far out to be used for anything useful or if i would be better off using a dial bore gage setting tool with gage blocks. im leaning towards the latter, just tell me so i dont look at them again lol.
 
I like ring gauges for checking the inside jaws of calipers. If these clean up reasonably well they'll probably still be fine for that purpose, given the low accuracy requirements (you're just checking that the jaws aren't grossly off).

But for anything tenths related, I'd want to do a cleanup hone on a Sunnen or similar (i.e. a proper hone, not a drill-driven ball hone), then get them recalibrated to the new size. Likely too much effort and $$ for your needs...
 
they wanted 1249 for them, i laughed and said you know these are basically ruined right? thats funny because i told the guy, its probably cheaper just to get new ones than fix these ones
 
They were shiny... = expensive to a pawn shop! LoL... I might do $10-20 each for the set. likely a 1000+ grit paper would fix them up and still be within tenths (providing the rust IS just surface...)
 
These are really hard to beat for the price.

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/92828045

I would use 'real" gage blocks though. Takes a bit of finesse to swing to and fro/left to right to get the highest/lowest spot, but I used this tool to do bearing bores without issue.

https://www.amazon.com/Fowler-53646...ds=master+setting+gauge&qid=1618835617&sr=8-2
i think i may finally break down and get the setter like that. im leaing towards the dorsey style bore gages though, everything else seems... kind of hokey wondering if anyone has experience with them.
 
Seeing as the OP was the one to bump the necro thread I'll consider replies fair game:
For most applications there's nothing wrong with setting a bore gage with a decent micrometer. The Sunnen setting fixture is really just a bench micrometer with a magnifier and (improperly fitting) fixture anyways.

I wouldn't trust a ring gage with anything more than what I could hand scrub out with a Kimwipe or similar.

As crummy as they are, cheap gage block sets are readily available at far less than what the OP's pawn shop wanted. I wonder if they are still there 2.5 years later?
 
Seeing as the OP was the one to bump the necro thread I'll consider replies fair game:
For most applications there's nothing wrong with setting a bore gage with a decent micrometer. The Sunnen setting fixture is really just a bench micrometer with a magnifier and (improperly fitting) fixture anyways.

I wouldn't trust a ring gage with anything more than what I could hand scrub out with a Kimwipe or similar.

As crummy as they are, cheap gage block sets are readily available at far less than what the OP's pawn shop wanted. I wonder if they are still there 2.5 years later?
i have a few sets of gage blocks. when i made this post 2 years ago, i know they had already been on the shelf for 3 years. good chance they are still there.
 








 
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