Aluminium Three Vials Level (500)

Level length matters because a level can only report the surface beneath its own length. A very short level tells you about 300mm at a time and misses everything between; a two metre level is accurate over a long run and cannot be used inside a kitchen carcase. Five hundred is the compromise that covers most of what an installer meets — door frames and linings, window openings, appliance and cabinet installation, brackets and rails, short pipe and conduit runs, worktop sections, and machinery feet.

Three vials give horizontal, vertical and 45 degrees. The vertical vial is worth using properly: for setting a frame, a post or a pipe truly plumb you should check on two faces at ninety degrees to each other, because something can be plumb when viewed from the front and leaning sideways.

The frame is aluminium — light, stiff and dimensionally stable, which matters because a level that bends is a level that lies — and it is magnetic. On steelwork, ducting, pipe, machinery frames and metal studwork the magnet holds the level in place so both your hands are free for the work, which is the single most useful thing a level can do for someone working alone.

The buyers are carpenters and joiners, kitchen and wardrobe installers, electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians, shopfitters, machinery installers, and hardware dealers supplying installation trades.

Three habits. Check the level against itself before you trust it — read a surface, then turn it end for end in the same spot; the bubble should sit the same both ways, and if it does not, the level is out and so is everything you set with it. Read the bubble from directly above rather than at an angle, because a viewing angle shifts the apparent position. And treat it as an instrument: the vials are set at manufacture and a drop moves them, after which the tool looks perfectly fine and quietly puts everything out of true. Ask us on WhatsApp for a price.