Who still makes…….

Lufkin made them, but not recently. These have a “-T” after the model number.

http://www.geionline.com/catalogs/catalog.asp?prodid=4797019&showprevnext=1

Thanks for that excellent link. In addition to changing their name from Gaebel to GEI, they seem to have retooled all their line gauges (new product numbers) and added a lot of other measuring and magnifying tools. There is more in their two pdfs than is shown on the webpages.

dicharry, thank you. I ordered one today. Ordering was simple and fast. I will post another comment when it arrives

The Gaebel family had a split many years ago and there were then two Gaebel outfits in Syracuse that competed with each other. Lithco, Inc. in Los Angeles purchased I beleive the A.E. Gaebel company and moved it all to California about 3 years ago. We buy our line gauges from Lithco and we offer the 12” line gauge at $9.85 with our imprint compared to GEI’s $17.96, and the 24” from us is $15.50 and $33.63 from GEI. We sell about 500 of the 12” line gauge a year and were surprised recently with an order of 75 from the IRS in Washington, D.C.

My shop is hidden in the woods here in southeastern Massachusetts, my wife has a yarn store on the other side of the property, about 2 years ago a woman from Oregon was visiting her son a few towns from us and wanted to visit yarn stores in this area, they came here and her son asked if he could roam around the yard instead of sitting in the yarn store, he spotted the print shop and we went in for a tour, he asked if i had a line gauge, so i put one in front of him, he laid his drivers license next to it, his last name was Gaebel, his grandfather once owned the company.

Love it - great story, dickg!

Fritz, can you compare the quality of the two companies? Some of the Gaebel brand line gauges bought over the last decade have had fine lines, others relatively coarse. I haven’t seen anything from GEI.
Line gauges from their competitor Pacific Arc have been uniformly fine (some US-made, some import).
I was impressed with how many things the GEI catalogs show that have been discontinued by other suppliers, like a version of the Palm-it gauge, and graphic arts comparator.

I’ve never had any quality problems with the Lithco/AE Gaebel line. The line width, finish, etc have always been fine. I never tried the other branch, now GEI, because of “incidents” other dealers reported to me in terms of their business dealings. I try not to buy imported products so have not tried Pacific Arc as it looks like most of their products come from China or Taiwan.