OMG Becky... Look at that Butt (Checker)!

I've been wanting to come back and revisit this one for a while...  Truth be told the butt checker was the first frame building tool I made when I started looking at picking up this craft.  It's never been the sexiest tool in my tool box, but it makes quick work of one of the most important aspects of frame building: understanding where your butts are and how to position them relative to the miters.  

THE ORIGINAL BUTT CHECKER...

CIRCA 2013

My goals for this redesign was to build a quality tool that does the important job it was meant to do for a reasonable price.  There were a few things that I never liked about the original design: First, (just being a form guy) the design always seemed a little stale (the left the cereal box open for a week kind).  At the time it was primarily because I was limited by a manually milling setup.  However, now that a majority of my work is done on a CNC it's opened up opportunities to be a little more creative and make the tool a little more polished.  Second, the standoffs were always a problem, tweak it a little to hard in the vise and the bottom end would slip under the standoffs misaligning the ball and dial indicator tip (an inconvenience more than anything).  Well, that has also been fixed with a full half round of surface contact between the upper and lower machined pieces making it a rock solid joint.  Lastly, the final minor annoyance was the flat front on the lower tube shaft, making it so there was never a smooth guiding transition into the tool, but that is also no more with a full round radius taking it's place and leading the tube straight into the mouth of this beast.  

With the new design I feel like I've solved a lot of the previous problems while still being able to keep the costs to a minimum.  In fact you can still buy the tool for my original price of $100.00 with the minor caveat that I do have to sell it that way as a BYOD (bring you own dial) setup.  It actually makes more sense this way anyways as a lot of you already have a suitable dial in your toolbox or you can simply pick one that meets your specific needs.  Anyways... without further ado, the new FARR Frameworks Butt Checker...

THE NEW AGE BUTT CHECKER

CIRCA Here & Now!