January 20, 2007 - 8:47am
Easy way to check your scale for accuracy
According to the US Mint, coins have the following weight -- penny: 2.500 grams, nickel: 5.000 g, dime: 2.268 g, quarter: 5.670 g. So you can check your scale by weighing a handful of pennies and nickels.
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Thanks for the tip!
Great tip. Just tried it and confirmed a nagging suspicion: my scale is pretty insensitive. What are others using out there?
Sylviambt
In search of the perfect crust & crumb
I have a MyWeigh i5000, which is spec'd as accurate to a gram. I have tested it with some antique laboratory masses up to about 400g, and it is dead on (well, until I dropped it from a height of 1.5 m onto a tile floor; now it is 1g off). The MyWeigh i2500 is spec'd as accurate to 0.5g.
For measuring yeast, salt, etc laboratory scales with a capacity of 100g and an accuracy of at least 0.1 g are not all that expensive. There are several web sites out there that sell lab scales direct to the public.
sPh
I'm using the Soehnle Vera digital scale. The coin test proved that it was accurate to the gram.
http://www.amazon.com/Soehnle-Vera-Digital-Food-Scale/dp/B00009K3SE/sr=1-27/qid=1169437365/ref=sr_1_27/105-2652228-2457260?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen
I don't know which is more amazing: that the US Mint is that accurate (!) or that my scale is (!). I use a Soehnle Attache, which I adore. It's small, but accurate to the gram (as tested with pennies and nickels). The only problem is that over the years flour (and coffee spilled from my mug) have gotten under the readout window, and there's no way to clean it. I contacted the mfr and they said I'd have to be break it to clean it!