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JOEL Joel's Blog

A Brief Return

10/08/2025

Making a tap guide for my lathe turret.
Making a tap guide for my lathe turret.

Of all the tools we manufacture the drafting rules are my favorite. I have one that I use everyday. It's the rule I use when I'm measuring something because of a customer query, if I'm trying to find the right stock to make a part, or if I have to part something off on a lathe to make sure it's the right length. Now the difference between a drafting rule and a regular rule is that the drafting rule has thin edge, which gets it close to the thing you are measuing or layout and and there is less parralax error. Ours version also has end grads, which is really handy for measuring short things when you simply don't have space for the entire length of the ruler. This is very handy when I am working on the lathe.

Starrett used to make a drafting rule, and I have one and that's where we got the idea that maybe we should reintroduce it. The Starrett drafting rule only had a bevel on one edge, ours has a cove which looks and feels nicer but more importantly it means if you press down on the one side of the ruler the other side lifts up and it's easier to pick it up.
So a few years ago we started making them. We discovered we had no idea what we were doing. When you mill the cove on one side the brass wants to buckle and the scrap rate was horrendous. So when we ran out of initial batch we stopped making them. About 2 years ago, we ordered material to make more of them, thinking we would do it better. But we gave up pretty quickly.
We still have the stock, and I have another idea about fixturing, but hustling to produces Gramercy Tools Treadle Lathes, I just haven't had the time to figure out if we have a good path. Maybe next year if I have time. However, we found a very small number of English rulers (8) buried in the warehouse that we didn't know we had, along with two English / metric (2) rules. We just put them up for sale now. If you've been jonesing for one now is your chance. Click here.

In other news this past weekend I once again visited the Poster House Museum to see their awesome exhibit "The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy". This was eyeopening to me as I never really understood much about Fascist Italy before WW2.
A Brief Return  2
A Brief Return  3


PS
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10/08/2025 Peter Szameitat
Thanks for putting these up. I’ve been trying to find these exact ones for almost a year in the secondary market. I remember when you made them originally and they haunt me for not getting one. Bummed I wasn’t fast enough to get one here. I hope the new process works out and they return next year. Brass has such a great tactile presence. I find most of my touchstone tools that I gravitate too are brass.
That does look like a nice ruler. I have an old Lufkin 12" skinny ruler that has 1/8ths on one side and 1/16ths on the other. I like it a lot because less visual clutter with no 32nds or 64ths. Where I think there is a market opportunity would be to have an engineering square with only 8ths and 16ths measurements. I have an old Stanley like this that I really like. No one currently selling has one like this. At one point, I reached out to Starrett to ask for a custom one and I think there needed to be a minimum order of like 100. I can't do that but you might. We're woodworkers and don't need such fine measurements. If we have a 16th we can easily guestimate to a 32nd. My two cents anyway.
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