I used a very inaccurate means of measuring thread a couple of days ago and was very surprised at what I found. I have a spring-loaded dial indicator thickness gage. Since it's very lightly spring-loaded, it DOES compress slightly.
Knowing that it isn't too accurate on soft materials, it's still a pretty good indicator of differences. I had been using some Orvis 8/0 thread and got into a section of thread that had a lot of flaws and it started breaking like crazy. I had a spool of another brand of 8/0 thread that I had picked up as a raffle prize at our club a couple of years ago. Getting frustrated with the Orvis thread (and I don't blame Orvis, it was just a bad section of the spool), I put the other brand in my bobbin. It felt much thicker, so I grabbed the thickness gage and measured it. Five measurements averaged 0.0034 inches. (34 ten thousandths). Then I measured the Orvis 8/0: 0.0013 inches. So the denier measurement is obviously not a good measure of thread thickness when comparing between kinds of thread. Within a given brand name or type of thread, it is perfectly good. 3/0 Uni thread is thicker than 6/0 Uni thread which is thicker than 8/0 Uni thread. But comparing two brands by the number just won't work without a lot more info available. Crawling back under my rock now. Allan Allan Fish Greenwood, IN [EMAIL PROTECTED]
