Tip of the day

I had to get a new bullseye bubble for one of my prism poles. Thanks to this board, I knew of the difference between an 8' and a 40'/42' bubble. I honestly had no idea there were different ones.

Anyway, I had had some serious trouble getting one of my poles to cooperate with me plumbing it up. (BTW: to plumb my poles I use a hook in a wood beam like a "spad" and have a mag-nail drilled into the concrete patio outside my office door.) The screws with the Allen wrench heads just wanted to tighten down or be semi-loose and not very plumb. The vials had a rocker pimple on the bottom of them and just didn't work very well.

When I received my new 8' vial from Hayes Instrument ($26) for my CST poles (or are they Seco??) the vial had a small piece of dense foam or rubber or something attached to it. It took some effort, but I got my main backsight pole all plumbed up and ready to go. But then I needed to switch out the vial on my backup pole, so I thought of what would take up that extra space and help me plumb the pole easily... and I happened to be switching some shoe insoles at about the same time.

Well, everybody has pair of boots or shoes that needs to be tossed, but has a decent pair of gel insoles in them. If you have one of the vial types that has the dimple and only wants to tighten or be kinda loose (you'll know what I'm talking about) you can cut off a uniform thickness piece of gel insole into a small triangle (avoiding the screw holes) and glue put it to the bottom of the vial before you drop it in the holder and it will create a great little buffer/bumper/tension rocker for your bubble.

Now why all the vials don't have these to begin with... I have no idea. But, I'm very happy with the little thing that I redneck engineered.

Have a great evening!!

Carl