Metric Screw Checker (2mm to 7mm) - Made in USA

This is great for all of my hobby work - I should have added this to my toolbox years ago! When you are trying to tell if a screw is a M2 or an M2.5 or an M3 this is indispensable. Small metric screws are more difficult for me to distinguish than the imperial ones I deal with. This tool takes out the guesswork, which is especially important if you need to order some screws to match what's on a part you are working with. This is well made. It is heavy gauge steel with a nice finish and markings. Someone commented that the 'case' is a ziplock bag - well it is, but it's a heavy/thick one that is the exact size of the tool. I think it is appropriate for the purpose. It protects the tool's finish, but doesn't take up a lot of extra room in the toolbox. It also allows you to keep the reference card together with the tool so it handy and keeps it from getting lost (it's not the end of the world if you lose it, but it does have some handy information).

Fabulous little screw sizing guide and thread tester. Very well thought out and designed, good information. Looks to be sturdy and should hold up (threads shouldn't gall out) for quite some time. Excellent little asset to have around a shop. My one complaint is the texture of the (sintered? Cast?) aluminum it's made out of gives me the heebie jeebies...like fingernails on a blackboard sort of sensation. On the plus side, since my wife hates that feeling even more than I do (can't even stand to touch sandpaper) I can chase her around the garage with it for a laugh.

Like many DYI or tinkerers, I have a ton of screws and bolts laying around, usually in cans, jars, or something other unsorted pile. This screw checker helps me sort them all out, so I can organize them into correct sizes, and know if I need to make trip to the hardware store or not. It's also very helpful if a screw gets lost and I don't know what the size was but have one of the same type. Being made of metal, it holds up really well, can be stuck to my toolbox with a magnet, and cleans the threads on the old crusty screws in a decent enough manner. The small size and hard material let it sit in travel toolbox easily without worry of it getting damaged. Overall, very quality item.

This is a great tool. I often have had no quick way to determine the size and threads of random screws encountered in equipment and these gauges are fantastic for this. I've gotten both the metric and SAE versions from these folks. They're small, durable, inexpensive, and should last for years.

Reading other peoples reviews I will comment on what they said. The unit I received is absolutely flat, the surface finish looks like it has been sand blasted with fine grit (perfectly acceptable), the text has been silk-screened, but is clearly readable. Yes, it would have been better if the markings were stamped or laser etched into the metal. I bought this because it would be quicker to test a screw size than with the screw checker I bought previously, but more important it had the following sizes that the other screw checker did not have: M2.2-.45, M2.2-.25, M4-.5, M5-.5, M6-.75, and M7-.75. The other kit I have goes down to M1.2-.25 though so both kits are necessary. The reason that I removed one star from this review is that I tested the sizes that I had in the other kit, and the M6-1 screw did not fit in the threaded hole. I was able to drive an M6-1 tap through that hole and clean it up so it now works, but I should not have had to do that.

Unfortunately, I don’t have tons of uses for this. In any case, though, I bought a used hard drive that uses an interface technology which is, now, generally obsolete called SCSI. While USB, FireWire and Thunderbolt have cables with small plugs that are easily connected from device to device, SCSI uses various big, fat cables which have fasteners that attach them to ports on computers, hard drives and scanners. The fasteners tend to be a type of screw that has two components to it, a male, threaded shaft and a female, threaded receptacle. The male shaft screws the SCSI port to the devices that are the host devices and then the receptacle, at the head of the screw, allows peripheral devices (hard drives, scanners, etc.) to have a SCSI cable screwed into the host devices. Because of the thickness of SCSI cables, they don’t bend, easily, and can have a tendency, if they are not, somehow, secured to the devices they are connected to, to come loose from what they’re connected to. Most SCSI cables use screws, like I mentioned above, called standoff screws, which allow them to be screwed into something and, in turn, another screw can be screwed into the head of the standoff screw. This is where this screw checker comes in. Maybe there is a standard size on these types of standoff fasteners for SCSI devices, but I don’t know that for a fact. Also, because SCSI is an obsolete interface standard, it’s hard to find whether there were common sizes for the screws and threads. Add in that the screws are very small and metric and it REALLY, REALLY, helps to have something like this screw checker. This screw checker probably wouldn’t be as useful to someone who works on cars, because its sizes are all very small, but for somebody who works, regularly, with computers and small electronics, this could be a real timesaver as you can actually screw the screw sizes that you have in question directly into this guide. This company also makes a metric screw checker for larger and more standard-sized screws and they also make screw checkers for American standard sizes, so even if this particular screw checker doesn’t work for you, the odds are good that this company makes and sells a screw checker that would fit anyone’s needs. It’s made of steel, too, so it’s very durable. The kind of tool that can last for a lifetime. I was able to determine the correct size and thread pattern for the fastener screws that I needed with this screw checker. This screw checker also gives you various different shaft sizes and “pitch” (similar to the American “threads per inch” standards) standards, so if your source screw can be screwed into this screw checker, you should be able to find an exact match for what you are looking for. This is one of those tools that you don’t know that you need until you need it.

It’s metal, durable, and has been used by me several times. I love it!!!

Accurate and useful