A personal archive of precision.

I've spent years chasing the history behind precision instruments — who built them, how the mechanisms actually work, and what it takes to prove a measurement is true rather than just trust the dial. This site is where that curiosity lives: a working record of research, restoration, and the occasional argument with a 1936 patent filing. Some of what passes through my bench is for sale. That's not really the point.

From the collection

Exhibit: Our Pledge to Industry

Frontispiece page of L.S. Starrett Co. Catalog 26, 1938, headed "Our Pledge to Industry" — the title in red script over black capitals, four short paragraphs of typewriter-face text below, signed for L. S. Starrett and for the company. Transcribed in full beneath this figure. — "Our Pledge to Industry" — L.S. Starrett Co., Catalog 26, 1938. From the Cascadia collection. Read who gets the credit: not the company's engineers but the users — the "skill and integrity" of the men at the bench — for the industrial expansion of the world. The accessibility argument, in the primary source's own voice.

The text of the pledge

To the trade without whose loyal co-operation we should never have attained our present ability to render useful service on a large scale—

To the thousands of men who use Starrett Tools to earn their daily bread, whose skill and integrity alone have made possible the tremendous industrial expansion of the world—

To all who know and love fine tools—

We pledge ourselves to protect and carry on the high standards set by our founder to the end that The L. S. Starrett Company shall continue to merit the distinction of the "world's greatest toolmakers" and that Starrett Tools shall continue to be known and accepted as standard the world over.

L. S. Starrett 1880 to 1909

The L. S. Starrett Co. 1909 to 1938

Modern manufacturing world, with its capabilities, is a marvel of precision and technology, achievements of which without a doubt warrants our utmost astonishment and admiration — Yet, after nearly a century since that quote was made I can't help but feel a longing for something that we've slowly lost… Join me in the search and exploration of what is it exactly that was lost and taking it back.

This site is the repository of information and data — every instrument, document, and measurement here is gathered in service of that pursuit.

Ilya

What's here

Research, not just inventory

The reference library holds what I've documented on makers, mechanisms, and lineage — Interapid, Mitutoyo, Federal, and the century of small Swiss and American shops behind instruments most people have never heard of. Some of it is interactive. All of it is built to be checked, not taken on faith.

The method

Verification over vintage

"Vintage" implies age is the selling point. I'm after something else: proof. Every claim in the reference library traces back to a patent, a specimen, or a bench measurement — and any instrument that passes through here gets checked the same way, against calibrated gauge blocks in a temperature-controlled room, before I'll vouch for it.

Bench verified — return-to-zero, gauge block comparison, and the instrument's serial number, photographed together. See how it works.

If you're looking to buy

A few instruments are available

I do sell what I've restored and verified — mostly micrometers and test indicators. It funds the research and keeps interesting pieces moving instead of sitting in a drawer.

See what's currently listed