Other Levels & Plumb Bobs
A spirit level or bubble level is an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is level or plumb. Different types of spirit levels are used by carpenters, stone masons, bricklayers, other building trades workers, surveyors, millwrights and other metalworkers. more...
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Spirit levels feature a slightly curved glass tube which is incompletely filled with a liquid, usually coloured 'spirit' (a synonym for ethanol), leaving a bubble in the tube. Ethanol is used because of its low freezing point, −114°C, which prevents it from freezing in cold weather. Most commonly spirit levels are employed to indicate how horizontal (level) or how vertical (plumb) a surface is.
Some are also capable of indicating the level of a surface between horizontal and vertical to the nearest degree. The crudest form of the spirit level is the bull's eye level: a circular flat-bottomed device with the liquid under a slightly convex glass face which indicates the center clearly. It serves to level a surface in two perpendicular directions, while the tubular level only does so in the direction of the tube.
The sensitivity of a level is given as the angle, in seconds of arc, by which the level has to be tilted to move the bubble by one graduation unit. For precision levels it is as little as 5″.
Types of level
There are different types of spirit levels for different uses:
Surveyor's leveling instrument;
Carpenter's level (either wood, aluminium or composite materials);
Mason's level;
Torpedo level;
Post level;
Line level;
Engineer's precision level;
Electronic level;
A spirit level is also usually found on the head of combination squares.
Surveyor's leveling instrument
Tilting level, dumpy level or automatic level are terms used to refer to types of leveling instruments as used in surveying to measure height differences over larger distances. It consists of a spirit level in the above sense, mounted on a telescope containing cross-hairs, itself mounted on a tripod. The observer reads height values off two staffs, one 'behind' and one 'in front', to obtain the height difference between the ground points on which the staffs are resting. Starting from a point with a known (absolute) elevation, by repeating 'behind', 'front' and intermediate 'front' readings, (relative) height differences can be measured cumulatively over large distances and elevations can be calculated of intermediate points.
See: Spirit leveling
Carpenter's level
A traditional carpenter's spirit level looks like a short plank of wood and often has a wide body to ensure both stability, and that the surface is being measured correctly. Embedded in the middle of the spirit level is a small window where the bubble and the tube is mounted. Two notches (or rings) designate where the bubble should be if the surface was level. Often also an indicator for a 45 degree inclination is included.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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