Help with Japanese “ghost” micrometers.

[ChaosHobbit]

Okay, so I’m brand new to the forum, and I’ve been collecting and restoring vintage tools for a while, but don’t have a lot of experience with precision machinist tools. I find myself in possession of a few Japanese micrometers. A couple Mitutoyo and a few old NSK, large, outside micrometers. From the research I’ve been able to do, the logos are very significant and reflect very old manufacturing. The Mitus have the circular 3 gourd (or acorn) logo in gold with black outlines. The NSKs are actually Nippon Sokutei Kogu Mfg Co, with the microscope logo, so…pre logo change…1950s? The thing is, I can find almost no information on them, not even a record of a single sale or valuation. They all have their cases, they all have their standards, they all zero reliably, all smooth like butter. Are they really that rare? Am I looking in the wrong places? I need a fellow tool nerd with this specific specialty to help me out…

 

[lu787a]

Guessing a little bit here but looking for 日本測定工具, I found this page of some similar micrometers from the company. Many of the listings have unknown (年代　不明) for the year.

日本測定 NSKの全国中古販売一覧 | 中古機械情報百貨店 | JAPAN MICROMETER

日本測定 NSKの中古機械リストです。価格・仕様などのご質問は各商品の中古機械販売店にお問い合わせください。

www.jp.usedmachinery.bz

Another NSK (日本精工) is a unrelated large automation and bearing company so that may be making the search more difficult.

 

[RTM]

As noted above, search in Japanese. There may not be old literature online in English, that was export labeling, so try using Google translate to get back to Kanji or Katakana characters, then use Chrome to translate them back in the fly.

It’s slow and painful, even more so f you know nothing about Japanese, like me. I can usually do German, Spanish and Italian with a bit of success, but nowhere near 100%.