Vernier Caliper for Precision shooting

J

JNA

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Hello,

I was wondering which Vernier caliper the precision reloaders recommend getting as my mastercraft caliper is very unreliable.
 
Go quality or go home: Starrett or Mitutoyo.

On the other hand, my no-name chinesium digital calipers seem to suffice for me. Then again, I'm more of a general purpose reloader leaning towards a modicum of precision.
 
The more precise your measuring device, the more you will lament the variance in your other equipment like loading press, powder measure and components.
 
OldDude said:
Go quality or go home: Starrett or Mitutoyo.

On the other hand, my no-name chinesium digital calipers seem to suffice for me. Then again, I'm more of a general purpose reloader leaning towards a modicum of precision.
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Any particular model?
 
adamg said:
The more precise your measuring device, the more you will lament the variance in your other equipment like loading press, powder measure and components.
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Have fairly good equipment, chargemaster, Redding and Forster dies
 
I use both starrett and mitutoyo on my bench. While some might argue the mitutoyo are better quality, the starrett are nicer for me to use for reloading. Auto on/off and larger display. The newer mitutoyo might be auto on/off now, but mine aren’t. It’s a pain. I don’t feel like you can’t go wrong accuracy wise. It’s nice to have a couple of pairs as well. I leave a Hornady comparator body on one all the time.
 
For the price, this might be acceptable if the major job it will do is repetitive batch measures of same caliber case.
 
I had good luck buying a used Starrett dial caliper on eBay. It was damaged, so I sent it to Starret for repair. They reconditioned it for free, and shipped it back to me also free.
Costs to me were maybe $50, for an excellent tool. No batteries, easy to read, reliable.
I would not consider using a digital caliper.
 
Mitutoyo is pretty much the gold standard these days.

Plan to spend $150 (Amazon) if you want one.

I have an older Mitutoyo dial caliper that I use for reloading. My work caliper is a digital Mitutoyo. No problems with either.

The last Starrett dial caliper I had was a POS, their quality has slipped badly.
 
Ganderite said:
I have a digital, a dial and a vernier.

I don't trust the digital. I prefer the dial. Very easy to read quickly.
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I second this.
I've never had a dead battery on my dial caliper. Digital battery seems to be dead at the most inopportune times, usually when I just used the last battery for something else.

On a side note, I have a very nice Mitutoyo that doesn't work anymore. Sounds like you can send a Starret for free warranty work. Can you send a Mitutoyo somewhere to get fixed?
 
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I tend to be trilingual. Use Mitutoyo at work.
 
Greg S said:
I second this.
I've never had a dead battery on my dial caliper. Digital battery seems to be dead at the most inopportune times, usually when I just used the last battery for something else.

On a side note, I have a very nice Mitutoyo that doesn't work anymore. Sounds like you can send a Starret for free warranty work. Can you send a Mitutoyo somewhere to get fixed?
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Tried cleaning battery contacts yet?

https://www.mitutoyo.ca/
 
For the once in a while use I get out of mine, I use two Canadian Tire digitals and just take the batteries out. As you might guess, I am not a precision shooter.
 
I use TESA calipers.
Not the crappy Brown and Sharpe "TESA" calipers that now have some parts made in China and assembled in Switzerland.
Spendy tho.
 
For reloading I would look at insize, asimeto, KAR industrial or Sowa. You don't need to go spending 150.00 + on a digital caliper for measuring the stuff you'd encounter in reloading, and realistically a caliper should only really be trusted to within +/- .005" anyway. For me personally I have a 6" digital asimeto that I use around the home shop and for reloading and it works well enough, it's not as nice as my Mitutoyo's at work but it was also 1/4 the price. I'd stop into one of your local machine shop suppliers and look at their seasonal sales catalog, they usually will have decent deals on various measuring tools. I think I got my asimeto caliper on sale for something like 60.00.
 
Lucite said:
For reloading I would look at insize, asimeto, KAR industrial or Sowa. You don't need to go spending 150.00 + on a digital caliper for measuring the stuff you'd encounter in reloading, and realistically a caliper should only really be trusted to within +/- .005" anyway. For me personally I have a 6" digital asimeto that I use around the home shop and for reloading and it works well enough, it's not as nice as my Mitutoyo's at work but it was also 1/4 the price. I'd stop into one of your local machine shop suppliers and look at their seasonal sales catalog, they usually will have decent deals on various measuring tools. I think I got my asimeto caliper on sale for something like 60.00.
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+2 for Asimeto. Got one as recommended by a machinist friend who uses both Mitutoyo and Asimeto tools and it is good enough for the precision requirements of reloading.
 
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