That's a possibility but assuming they all come off the same assembly line then I feel like they should be relatively consistent. My colleague has a tape measure that is "class 1", which means it has at most 1.1mm deviation over 10m. I'm hoping to compare the two, we'll see.

Edit: that actually seems less likely now that I think about it. The tape measures that are certified are certified by NIST, which is not cheap. If Starrett knew that many of them would not meet the spec then I don't think they would attempt to certify all of them. If a business wants to pay the money to have certified tape measures than I think they probably want some traceability for the precision of their measurements.

Believe it or not, but this is how CPUs and other microchips are handled. For a specific architecture, the chip is tested and depending on how many cores are working and how well it performs, it will be sold as say i3, i5 or i7 (in case of Intel).

This sounds correct.

They're centi-inches

I'm just now realising British tape measures are probably pretty unique in that they typically come with one side metric, one side imperial

That's fair. Generally yes, it doesn't matter most of the time. I worked in metrology for a couple years and appreciate having accurate measuring devices. I have other tape measures that look and feel better to use but I wanted something that I can be confident is accurate. Maybe I should have paid for the one with the calibration cert.

The Starrett doesn't seem particularly rugged, we'll see how it goes. My tools generally don't get damaged much, I don't do any serious construction or anything, I usually work in a lab environment.

Slap! And the name goes on. That's an efficient industrial manufacturing production process, right there.

Yah, I use a few Starett instruments in the shop, they're pretty nice. But these aren't anything special, I have one. It's just a tape measure and not even particularly well built. I don't think it'll survive many drops, not like my Fat Max tape. But then again, it won't leave a dent in the floor like the Stanley.

He needs a CMM now to go with his gucci tape measure.

Coordinate-measuring machine

Its a machine that uses a very small probe to measure things with precision

A marking knife! When I bought one it changed my woodworking, I'm only off a little now.

Yeah... I use 0.9mm lead in my drafting pencil. I tried 0.3mm once but it breaks if you breathe on it too hard.

I've never been impressed with laser alignment of tools; red laser diodes tend to put out a line that to my eyes looks about 1/8" wide.

My miter saw tries to be clever and cheap about it and has a white LED positioned behind the blade so that it casts the blade's shadow on the work. Kinda wish they hadn't tried that because, with a miter saw, I can just lower the blade onto the work, line it up with the mark on my work, and then cut. Feels like putting holographic sights on an axe.

Yeah you're not wrong.

That loosy-goosy end is there for a reason: it gives the right reading when hooked on the outside of an object and is pulled out, but also when put on the inside (of a corner, for instance) and is pushed in.

If yours has a fixed one then it's less accurate than any other one with a loose end.

It's loose for a reason. It moves back and forth exactly the thickness of the clip itself.