Digital Calipers, the most useful tool in the shop

by Scott

I'm the customer service guy here at VO. Odds are if you call or email us, I'm the person who will answer your question, solve your problem, or suggest a web site to look at. Looking back at the questions that we are asked, one item that would help a lot of folks answer their own question or at least have a good starting point, is a set of digital calipers. All of us here have a set on their desks. I use mine multiple times over the course of a day to measure things for customers or just to get a perspective of how large or small something is.

Digital calipers are the modern day evolution of Vernier calipers.  You can use these to measure the outside width of a bar or the length of an axle or the diameter of a seat post. They have smaller measuring jaws on them so you can measure the inside diameter of a bar.

When measuring headsets and bottom brackets, they are invaluable. You can quickly determine if the bottom bracket is French, Italian, or English. You can see if the stem is French or English sized and determine the crown race diameter to see if you need an English or JIS headset. You can measure how wide your tires are mounted on your rims, so you can determine the correct fender size.

The digital calipers can be converted at a push of a button from metric to inches as a decimal or as a fraction, thus allowing for easy conversion from one to another. There is also a set screw on the top so that you can hold a measurement if the reading is turned away from you.

A trick to ensuring correct measurements is to always push the jaws together and zero the measurement out first thing, so that you are sure the measurement is correct.

After a while, you'll find uses for this tool outside the bike world- want to see what size tubing or pipe you have in the laundry room? Use the the calipers to measure them. You'll look like a genius at the hardware store when you can ask for the tubing using the ID and OD without hesitation.