StarrettTempered Steel English Thickness Gage with Easily Removed Leaves - Ideal for Carpenters and Home Improvement - 31 Number of Leaves, 1/2"-1/4"x3"-1/32" Size of Leaves - 66B

This Starrett gage is way more expensive than the majority of equivalent functionality gages offered on Amazon, so….is it worth it? It looks beautiful that’s for sure. When you hold it in your hand and look at it you get the feel that it’s well designed and made with care. The little details evoke a feeling of quality. The blade holder is strong and well polished, the locking mechanism is metal and large enough to get a grip on, the markings on the blades appear laser etched and easily readable, etc. etc. But is it accurate? If you’re gapping a spark plug you don’t need this but if you really want to know clearance between two surfaces that should never touch then can you trust this? I decided to dig into that question with some quantitative investigation.I measured each blade in three places that are important to me. Location (A) is at the end of the gage centered in its width but backed off about 3 mm from the end. Location (B) is at the end of the gage where any burr present would bias a gap measurement when inserted straight on. Location (C) is at the left “corner” of the blade end. This corner is the transition from the rounded side of the blade to the sharp edge end of the blade. This is where a burr would be a problem if the blade is inserted from the side instead of the end. The measurement instrument faces are 0.275 and 0.375 in diameter so there is some overlap in the measurement area. The data summary is shown in the graph where Location (A) is marked with a blue diamond, (B) is marked with a red square, and (C) is marked with a green triangle. The graph is showing the measured deviation from the marked value of each blade. Some of the blades were beyond excellent with very low deviation. The 0.017 inch blade, for example, showed an error of 0.00002 at the front edge (B) and less for locations (A) and (C). The estimated measurement uncertainty is probably in the +/- 0.00004 range so “error” for this blade is in the measurement mud. All the other blades measured well within expectations (Starrett doesn’t specify an accuracy so I only have my expectation that the error of any one blade would be less than half the distance to the next smaller or larger blade. This would be +/- 0.0005 for all but the largest). The only exception was the 0.008 blade. The left corner measurement was 0.00864. Under the microscope, the left corner had a small burr in the transition from smooth to sharp edge. A couple of light strokes with a fine diamond file cleared that up and brought this measurement down to 0.00803. The other large deviations between the A, B, and C locations for other blades are most likely also due to very small edge burrs. The worst case deviation across the set of 31 blades (after fixing the 0.008 blade) was less than 0.0003 which was significantly better than my expectation. So, is it worth it? For me, the answer is clearly YES! This is a product from a manufacturer that cares about quality.

Quality product! The world is now full of junky, rust-prone and bendy crap where a good feeler gauge set used to be a lifetime tool. (I have had my Starett set since 1978.) This looks quality! Unfortunately not marked with both metric and inch markings.

Well made and easy to read.

This gage set is one of the few being made that does not have a sharp (usually small) lip around the curved outer edge. This gage set has the consistent high quality I've come to expect from a Starrett product. Craftsman equivalent does not offer as many leave thicknesses, the Blue Point has the sharp edge mentioned above (this applies to several of the lower cost alternatives). Cost is a little higher, but you get what you pay for.

Starrett = the Pinacle of American manufacturing, pure perfection! Words can't describe it, have to hold it and compare to other stuff that's floating out there

What can I say, it's a Starrett. Great quality.

As another reviewer said "perfect." Over the years I have bought both Starrett and (sometimes) less expensive tools; all the Starrett tools I still have and they are in excellent working order. You get what you pay for.

Excellent little gage with a ton of thickness feelers.