Northern California Calibration Check
September, 2009


Members from the Northern California area met on September 13th to revive a long standing practice of getting together for some great scale talk.  Although it was not their largest gathering in terms of participants, the amount of collective scale knowledge that was present in the room that day was off the scale.  Ralph and Pat Bergmann organized the meeting and it was held in the club house at their condo.  There was plenty of room to spread out and show off the wares including a table with items for sale.

Bill Doniger, always willing to share his treasures, brought several items for Show and Tell.  Everyone’s attention was captured with his scale for weighing and grading olives. 
 
 He also presented a small Troemner scientific scale, a very old weight from a Roman steelyard and a collapsible postal scale that folds into a small round box.  Ken Goodhue did his part to add interest by bringing a Troemner Mint scale highly decorated with superb workmanship.  Not to be outdone Ben Amigable showed a couple of beautiful postal scales he had purchased from Bob Stein’s collection.  David Roberts mixed it up a bit by bringing a set of British brass weights.  Clem Monday joined in with a Pollack scale, an equal arm with an unusual feature.  An aluminum kitchen spoon scale brought by Ralph Bergmann finished out the show.  Just goes to prove that even a small gathering of “scalies” can produce a varied and engaging program. Norm Cima came up with a unique, but very practical idea, which he introduced at this meeting.  He brought an odd collection of weights and encouraged others to bring their “orphan” weights so that people could trade.  The idea is to exchange weighs to make up complete sets of matching weights.  Norm further contributed to the meeting by bringing two Allender coin detector scales with a variety of adjusting weights to offer attendees.   Everyone enjoyed the camaraderie of the day and no one went home hungry with the ample lunch of shrimp, sandwiches, salad and fruit.  There was a discussion of moving the date for next year’s meeting to October.  The possibility of inviting members from Southern California to join them was explored.  It was decided to discuss this matter further with participants at the Portland Convention.  After a pleasant day of being saturated with scale talk, the meeting adjourned in time for most everyone to get home to catch the 4th quarter of San Francisco’s first real football game of the season.