Digital Protractor and/or Bevel Gauge
I’m something of a luddite. I really enjoy using traditional tools in my work. I’m not talking about hand tools vs power tools here. I mean I’d rather use an old tool than a new one. I don’t know why; there’s certainly no practical explanation. For me, however, it’s just more fun to use a tool that has a nice patina and maybe a scratch or three on it that reflects use by its previous owner.
Because of this, I’m not prone to lured by marketeers hawking laser-guided tools, battery-operated clamps, or tools made from exotic woods. And when Lee Valley sent me a notice that they’d made a special buy of digital protractors, I wasn’t too interested. But I read the blurb anyways and eventually got to the price – $15. That caught my attention.
Squaring up table saw blades, setting a cut angle, chisel/plane honing angles and splaying legs on a stool are just some of the places where measuring an angle is useful in my shop. And so I sprung for one of those ‘new-fangled’ devices and it arrived yesterday.
The tool is easy to operate. You just open it to the angle you want and lock the angle in place. One nice thing is that you can set the device to zero at any angle, allowing measurement from that angle. Note in the first photo that the device describes a 45-degree angle, measured from a ‘zero’ of the two arms sitting on top of one another. But if you open the two arms to 180-degrees and then zero it, you can then measure 45-degrees in the other way (second photo). Very handy. For $15 it’s hard to go wrong and I became just a bit less of a luddite today.
Cheers — Larry
Full Chisel Blog
Logan Cabinet Shoppe
Renaissance Woodworker
Tom Fidgen's Made By Hand
Village Carpenter
Wood Whisperer
Fine Woodworking Magazine
Popular Woodworking Magazine
Wood’n Bits
Larry,
How is the locking mechanism? Does it slip at all? Will it survive a fall from the benchtop and still stay locked?
I was impressed with the locking mechanism, though I can’t say how it will hold up in the long term. It seems to function in the same way most bevel gauges work, however, so I see no reason why it won’t last a long time.
Just cuz it’s you who is asking, I ran to the shop and dropped it twice
I confess that I dropped it to my floor mats rather than to the concrete floor but that’s where it would land if I were to drop it and besides I’ve seen what happens when someone tested wood planes to destruction so didn’t want to press this test too far (grin).
The first time I dropped it I dropped it “flat”, so that both blades hit pretty much flat to the floor. No problems whatever. Then I dropped it so that one blade would hit first, driving it towards the second blade (worse case scenario). Frankly, I was surprised as it didn’t budge. I’m sure that, just like a bevel gauge, these results are dependent upon how tightly you tighten the lock before elbowing the tool off your bench by mistake.
Hope that adds a bit to the info pile.
Cheers — Larry