Quote:
Originally Posted by adouglas
I've never used a beam wrench because of parallax* . I wonder if it's really possible to get a proper view. You need to be looking at it dead-on to see what the pointer indicates, right?
Do you find this to be an issue at all?
|
Essentially, no. With the wrenches I have, the pointer sits pretty close to the scale. I just looked at my 100 lb-ft wrench, and if I try to read the scale from a 45 degree angle, the error is about 2 lb-ft. If I had to read it like that, I could easily see that when I'm not applying force to the wrench the zero reading was actually 2, and I could make up for that when torquing the bolt.
It is possible to shove the wrench sideways, causing the pointer to rise off the scale about 1/8", but if that happens it's pretty obvious, and you can quit shoving sideways.
Now if I ran a shop and had entry level trainees torquing bolts, I might very well prefer they use the click type wrench, and insist they bring it to me to set it before each use, since it probably takes a little skill to use the beam type. Not a lot... a little.