My new(est) toy - a Sine Bar
Not a strange drinking establishment - a device for accurately measuring angles.
Distance and length can be measured easily to several tens of a thousandth of an inch. Angles, not so.
With length, you can use a micrometer screw to get a fine division but for angles, you are basically looking at a pointer and an engraved scale and the best you can do is about a quarter of a degree accuracy. Unfortunately, this is not enough for some instances.
Enter a bit of geometry, a splash of trig and precise angle measurement is yours...
Wikipedia has an
excellent short article explaining the process.
Here is the catalog photo of mine -- a
brown & sharpe:
Cool stuff and amazing accuracy for such a simple technique.
Posted by DaveH at July 3, 2008 6:32 PM