OK, It seems that it is hard to be with out a decent caliper for measuring in the shop. In particular I like to use them for checking the thickness of the wood going through the planer. They are also handy for measuring the depth of holes, the height of the TS blade, small gaps, etc.
For several years I used a General brand, plastic, dial caliper that measured hundredths of an inch. I paid about $25 for it 7 years ago. It worked but one that displayed fractions would be better. About 2 years ago I purchased a stainless steel dial caliper that displayed in fractions of
64'ths and in hundredths of an inch. It was much easier to use. IIRC about $29.Friday a week ago I ordered the new Digital Fraction caliper from Lee Valley. Features include, Stainless Steel, LCD display with the largest numbers being almost 1/2" tall, It will display in increments of .01 mm, .001" and 1/128" fractions. It comes in a decent protective plastic caring case.
The caliper came with 2 batteries, 1 was a spare, and instructions that are......somewhat lacking, buy hey, its a caliper, what's to learn. Either way the caliper is very easy to use and is intuitive. 3 buttons either turn the unit on or off, toggles between decimal mm's, decimal inches, or fractions of an inch, and resets to zero. Accuracy is pretty good, if you open it up to 4 1/2" reset to zero and close, the display will read -4 1/2". Do that in the decimal inches display and you might get -4.4995, almost always within one half of .001". Good enough for woodworking. While working within the tolerances of 1/128" of an inch is certainly good enough also for 99.9% of your wood working needs sometimes working with those tiny increments of a fraction can be a bit of strain on your mental resources if you are trying to visualize and recognize the measurement. 3/4" is easy to visualize but 96/128" requires a bit of thought. Fortunately all fractions are immediately reduced to the lowest possible denominator but again if you are planing and shooting for 3/4", how close are you if the board measures out at 97/128", or 99/128"? This IMHO this is where the reset to zero button shines. Simply open the caliper to
3/4", press the zero reset button, and then measure your wood. If you are dead on, you get "0". If you are a little wide at 99/128" you get a reading of 3/128" which IMHO is a lot easer to visualize than 99/128".Lee Valley has them at an introductory price of $24.99 plus shipping. IMHO a very good deal if you have been thinking of getting a caliper for the shop.