Mitutoyo America Corporation has a long history of providing world-class calibration services as well as premier educational instruction in calibration methods and techniques. This presentation is based on some of the key issues that have been observed in our popular Hands-On Gage Calibration course over the years. Calibration is all about maintaining quality and establishing traceability for measuring equipment. To achieve these goals, calibration must be a well-engineered search for errors. Economic realities limit the amount of time and testing in calibration, and therefore methods must be chosen wisely to provide the most information with the least amount of work. This presentation leverages the excellent American national standards available in dimensional metrology – the B89 series of standards developed under the auspices of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (www.asme.org). This presentation has been delivered by Mitutoyo America personnel at a number of conferences and other events, in particular at national and regional NCSL International meetings (www.ncsli.org).