I purchased a vintage set of little weights at a recent estate sale. They are labeled “20DK”, “10DK”, “5DK”, “2DK”, “10G”, “1DK”, and “5G”. I get that G refers to grams but what does DK refer to? Decagrams?
What would really help would be to weigh them, and find out how much they actually weigh. That said, though, the set of weights you mention does seem to support the notion of “decagrams”. It’s quite common for weights to come in sizes of 1, 2, and 5 times powers of 10.
Even if you don’t have a scale, does the “1 DK” seem to weigh twice as much as the “5 G”?
This page includes a table of weights, measures, and abbreviations including a column titled “Bogus”, with “dk” shown as an abbreviation for “deca” but in the Bogus column.
ETA: This link takes you directly to said table.
More ETA: This page says:
Well the “10G” and “1DK” do seem to be the same size so I guess each of the DK units is 10 times as much grams. Funny that DK is a “bogus” unit of measure.
The decagram (10 g) is still somewhat popular in the successor states of Austria-Hungary and in Poland, but AFAIK usually abbreviated dkg or dag.
Are you sure about the weight marked “10G”? 10 g = 1 dag i.e. the weights “10G” and “1DK” would have the same mass. The set would make sense if the masses were
“1G” = 1 g
“5G” = 5 g
“1DK” = 10 g
“2DK” = 20 g
“5DK” = 50 g
“10DK” = 100 g
“20DK” = 200 g
Huh.
I’m in the scale and balance biz and have never encountered a DK weight standard.
It must be badly obsolete.
It looks as though the “10G” weight might be from another set. Although very close in size and shape to the “1DK”, its knob is every so slightly different from the others in the set.
Nice to be “badly obsolete”!
Five gram weights? What’s that for, the strong man act in a flea circus?
What are they supposed to be used for?
Regards,
Shodan
Ha! With a small balance scale I suppose.
You know those old timey equal-arm balance beam scales like Ms Justice holds? Before they had unequal-arm sliding weight scales (ie the traditions doctor’s office scale) or spring scales (often seen in grocery produce departments) and long before digital devices available today, you needed a calibrated weight standard set to determine how much an item weighed. You put the unknown load on one pan and an equal, known load on the other. A wide range of various sizes would offer decent resolution in determining the load to level the balance arms.
Today, you can use them to calibrate across the range of a digital balance. You normally adjust the span near the capacity but verify the linearity down toward zero at as many points as you like.
The unit isn’t bogus; just that particular abbreviation is.
One known load* in each pan shows it’s, roughly, accurate.
*Either the 10G and the 1DK, or the 2DK and both the 10G and the 1DK.
CMC fnord!
you’d be surprised where you see it used. I was in a couple of European Ford Transit vans, and they had labels in the read quoting the load limit in DekaNewtons (DaN.)
Pharmacies, in the days when pharmacists frequently mixed compounds on an individual basis.
I used to have a neat little set of those weights from my father’s drug-store, in a small hinged wooden box, but they got lost in a move. 
In the past I have used a balance scale to balance a set of piston to each other and to other rotating masses. This was before digital scales were commercially available. So while the DG marking is old & unusual, it is still a valid weight.
I balance my pistons to within 2 grams of each other. So with the balance scale, I would use the weights down to at least two grams. IIRC, I used the 1 gram weights often. The scale I used did come from a store that had had a pharmacy in it, so it was probably used to weigh out drug doses back in the day. FWIW, a US quarter weighs 5.7 grams, or it did 30 years ago.
I also have never seen a weight with DG or DK on it. What I do not understand is why would DG = DK? Does G = K? I would think that DG = Deca Grams, & DK = Deca Kilograms. Obviously this is not the case since Senegoid said, “the “10G” and “1DK” do seem to be the same size so I guess each of the DK units is 10 times as much grams”. So what does the K stand for in these weights?
Please help me fight my ignorance. Thanks, 48.
As already been mentioned, dekagrams (=10 grams) is still widely used in Austria for food items. I found an old auction on Ebay (German version) where somebody also sold a vintage set of weights which are marked “10 Dk”, “20 Dk” etc. There are some pictures as well (scroll down):
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Dekagramm-Gewichtssatz-aus-Messing-von-1-DK-bis-20-DK-Box-/400613135841
Thanks for the explanations.
Regards,
Shodan
The set that Donnerwetter linked to looks almost exactly like my set. The only difference I see is in the wooden case lid. Thanks.
From Donnerwetter’s information I think the “DK” refers to DeKagrams.
Yes, but that’s old usage. These days, the usual abbreviation for decagram (German: Dekagramm, singular same as plural) would be: dag. When you buy 200 grams of sausage at an Austrian butcher shop, you just say: 20 Deka. It is implied that Deka in this context always means decagrams.