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The Johnson Digital Protractor kit comes in a very nice wooden box that protects your investment and keeps everything together.
Click image to enlarge

Johnson Digital Protractor

When you have to be right

Text, photos and video by Tom Hintz

Posted - 2-3-2014

Few things are as important in a layout as is getting angles right the first time. An equal challenge can be identifying an existing angle with precision. In either case the Johnson Digital Protractor (# 1454-0000) makes these operations simple, dead-on accurate and most importantly, repeatable. The versatility of the Johnson Digital Protractor with its included components lets you configure it for the job at hand.

The Johnson Digital Protractor with its LCD display makes reading the angles far easier than even well-made Vernier scales with their magnifying lenses. The Johnson Digital Protractor displays the angle in degrees and degree, minute and seconds measured by its high-end digital mechanism in easy to read numbers that do not change because of the angle you are viewing them from. Try that with etched or printed numbers and any angle creates a parallax that can give you a false visual reading. dubaiescortstars.com

The Basics

 

The kit contents (left) give you far reaching measuring capabilities, many of which you may not recognize until you find yourself in that situation. the ends of the blades (right) are angled at 30 and 45 degrees and the acute angle piece has a 60-degree slant. These known angles gives you even more ways to measure or set up an angle.
Click images to enlarge

The Johnson Digital Protractor is all stainless steel as you would expect in a tool of this quality. To make it easier to read than any Vernier protractor Johnson gave it an oversized, easy to read LCD display. You can zero the Johnson Digital Protractor at any point and lock the blade or base (or both) at any point using individual locking levers. A fine adjustment dial lets you sneak up on a setting easily with spot-on digital accuracy. A “Mode” button lets you choose from a 0- 360-degree range, 0 - 180-degrees and 0 - 90-degrees. You can also reverse the readings rather than trying to read the Johnson Digital Protractor from the wrong side.

Overall the Johnson Digital Protractor has a measuring range of a 0 - 360°, a resolution of 30" and an accuracy of +/- 5’. They include a 90-degree machined steel calibration square to check or set the base and blade to 90-degrees.It operates on a single 3V CR2032 lithium battery (one is included) and the battery life in normal use is approximately 1 year. The overall dimensions are 5.5" x 1.5" x 2.5" (139 x 38 x 63mm) and it weighs all of 0.740 lbs (0.336 kg). The Johnson Digital Protractor has a working temperature range of 32 degrees F to 104 degrees F (0degrees C to 40 degrees C) Johnson backs the tool with a 1 year limited warranty with the store receipt so hang on to the paper!

The Johnson Digital Protractor comes with the 2-3/8”-diameter digital gauge mechanism, a 4-3/4”-long base arm, a 11-7/8”-long blade, a 5-7/8”-long blade, a 2-3/4”-long acute angle blade, a 2-5/16” by 1-15/16” calibration square and an instruction sheet. All of the components come in a very nice fitted wooden case. This is a very old school box but very effective at protecting your investment and keeping everything together with a classy look to boot.

In the Shop

 

the mode button (left) lets you measure in a 0- 360-degree range, 0 - 180-degrees and 0 - 90-degrees whatever makes your job more precise. They include a finely machined setup square (right) so you can check or re calibrate the tool whenever needed.
Click images to enlarge

If you have never used a tool like the Johnson Digital Protractor there might be a little learning curve to be sure you are getting the most out of a tool with extensive capabilities. The combination of blades and arms let you measure angles on surfaces that do not have to meet as with a simple protractor or angle gauge. The components of the Johnson Digital Protractor are precision machined to be sure that the tool itself is not introducing errors. The ends of the 11-7/8”-long and 5-7/8”-long blades have a 30-degree angle on one end and a 45-degree on the other end. The 4-3/4”-long base arm has a 60-degree angle on its end. Those angled ends give the Johnson Digital Protractor a little more versatility for measuring precisely in more situations.

The Johnson Digital Protractor is also great when you have to do very precise layouts or need to position objects exactly during assembly. The “zero anywhere” function is very handy in many situations where you want to move something a known number of degrees from where it was originally. We used to have to do this quite often when building race cars to refine suspension geometry and a tool like the Johnson Digital Protractor would have made that a much easier job.

Conclusions

 

The Johnson Digital Protractor is obviously a high-end tool that makes your work easier by getting angles right the first time. The combination of components give the Johnson Digital Protractor a level of versatility that probably won’t become obvious until you us t for a while in your environment. Everybody seems to have their own way of applying a tool and the Johnson Digital Protractor gives you lots of options to work with.

Video Tour

The Johnson Digital Protractor has a street price of around $523.00 (2/3/2014) which certainly is not chump change but does represent a solid investment if accuracy is at all important to your work. Considering the quality of the Johnson Digital Protractor this will be a one-time investment that will make your work more accurate while reducing the time invested to get things right. If your time is worth anything to you the Johnson Digital Protractor should be in your tool box now.

Visit the Johnson Digital Protractor Product Page

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