Bridge City US-4 Universal Squares ??

[Lincoln Myers]

Anyone have any experience w/ these tools? I know Bridge City makes REAL NICE tools. Rockler has these universal squares on sale and I was thinking I might get one. Seems like it might be useful.

Any thoughts or experiences w/ this particular tool would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Linc.

[Bartee Lamar]

I just purchased one. I used it for about 5 hours last weekend building a Box Jig.

The "Fit and Finish" was not perfect. there were some rough spots ( sorta like aluminum nicks ) on the edges and to me the edge surface was not "smooth". I use a 5mm pencil for fine marking and it did not like the rough edge. When I run my hand over the edge surface I expect smooth. I used some 400 emory paper flat on my workbench and after a few strokes I got an an acceptable finish. I expected better from Bridge City. ( I just checked, it is made in USA. Not very good QC ) Compared to my INCRA Square ( Which I really like ) http://www.woodpeck.com/squares.html I was really sorta disapointed. I did not bother the people at Rockler. I did not want to take the time to send it back and really did not think I would get anything better.

I bought it to use as my apron square. The markings are in numbered 1/16ths. I think I like that. Its inside measurement is a good thing. It works well for for fine measurement and marking.

I know this sounds odd but one of the uses I thought it would be good for is checking the rip fence distance. Since the fat side would sit against the fence and I could eyeball the blade when I an going for an exact cut. Well I usually use my 12' stanley tape I use for everything. It seems to me there is a very small difference. I would guess the tape is problably wrong, but I have not thought about it enough to really check it. I will have to decide what I am going to do about that. I guess I need a really accurate tape measure, but that is a different topic.

I guess I was expecting a better feeling tool that I got. I would not have paid the Bridge City price, but did pay the Rockler sale price.

Just my $.02 YMMV

[Rob Russell]

I've got the set. The big one seems too nice to use as a speed square. the smaller ones are nice for sticking in your pocket when you've got smaller work to do. Were they worth the money? I got them on some sort of sale from Bridge City - I guess they were woth it.