[masraum]

Originally Posted by LEAKYSEALS951

My grandfather on my mom's side of the family gave my dad a French Mabo metric tape measure as a gift.

It rode in my dad's 911 for years.

Then along comes ME, (insert dumdarse me) who drops it in a lake. My dad was pissed beyond belief. Understandably. He made me rummage through the lake with a big magnet. No luck.

In the 1980's (after an exhaustive Yellow Pages search) there was only one Mabo dealer in our town, I drove there, and this was a discontinued model. I was out of luck.

I always felt awful. When my dad died, I found one on Ebay, and tossed it in my 911. Drove around with it for months. One day while visiting his grave, I dropped it off for payback, a little late.

Looks like they are still on ebay. Funny thing is, I never even got to try out the metric part of the tape.

edit- interesting tidbit- they don't just measure on the tape, they measure from the top. Check out the pics.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/385635664626?hash=item59c9ad42f2:g:1MoAAOSwwdhkbnM m&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4INej3SpO7SWOcwT27EpN9ftoaeUe tK%2BqR2cDE1Itu0iqh31HgiZx7y2aKg%2BxIKEnzlmaBnrdRQ WgN2ugpc0AOFHR0AOHeP0WN1sqy0aIDrwe3%2FAAqPRS0ub8A5 95EwV8Hb2mxNM%2FH9s%2Fus%2BwxLZpe30fAMQ2ETL5fnIAhe Rm8UBw6UFxHUdGLwmYgldjljKTChPcLZ0koIIJTynKS6jQU4dP %2FMt59CdmaAfZokf6ajudy29h1WbAixiLoLxeiNMYoq8zT9xk mouc93%2F7zp%2FpZMKNRYeS%2BoZmkT6eN900YXX%7Ctkp%3A Bk9SR4bftcnzYg

Very cool story, thanks for sharing!

Also a very cool measuring tape. The level and the window to read the measurement from the top is interesting (might take a little getting used to). What I was wondering while scrolling through the pics was, "Ok, you've get the line on top to read the measurement from, does that take into account the distance to the end of the body or is the spot directly below the red line, or...?" But then I got to the last pic, and the first (guessing ~3" of tape) have no markings other than the arrow and "point of measurement." Very cool, and interesting tape measure. I may get one as a curiosity.



Interesting, these are both pics of the same tape measure. Interesting that the markings are different on the top and bottom of the tape.