Morning. Grab the order card off the pin and read it out loud if it helps — I do. Then plug three. Always plug three first. If it walks through you've saved yourself the caliper entirely.
READING 0.000 IN · FREE AIR
Every clip on this board is punched with three digits. It is not a part number the way people expect a part number. The middle digit is the jaw gap in eighths of an inch, rounded down to the eighth it lives in. That is the whole trick. A 427 has a two-eighths gap — a quarter inch, near enough — and you can call it across the room without walking over, which is the point of it.
| middle digit | eighths | gap falls between |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/8 | 0.125 – 0.249 in |
| 2 | 2/8 | 0.250 – 0.374 in |
| 3 | 3/8 | 0.375 – 0.499 in |
| 4 | 4/8 | 0.500 – 0.624 in |
| 5 | 5/8 | 0.625 – 0.749 in |
The gap is the number between the two grip lips. It is not the outside width of the clip and it is not how big the thing looks lying in your hand — a wide fat clip can have a mean little slot and a small one can gape. Two numbers is all a clip ever is: what it grips and what it slides on.
A gap one eighth too wide slips on the belt at the wrapper and you get loose loaves down the line. One eighth too narrow cracks at the shoulder and goes right through the film. Polyethylene at four gauge gathers thicker than waxed paper did, so the same loaf takes a wider gap now than it took two years ago — that's why the old floor cards are wrong and nobody has reprinted them.
The caliper reads to a thousandth. The clips are punched to a hundredth. Anything past the second decimal is the caliper being polite to you.