A method of making a standard tool for calibrating polarimeters that analyze stress in photoelastic material, includes the steps of partially annealing a starting piece of tempered glass so that the starting piece has a retardance below 250 nm/cm, removing a peripheral portion of the starting piece (preferably, at least about 20% of its radial dimension) to leave a working piece, cutting a rectangular parallelepiped from the working piece, polishing two opposing faces of the rectangular parallelepiped where the two opposing faces are spaced apart by a measurement distance through which light passes during stress analysis in a polarimeter, and determining a birefringence of the rectangular parallelepiped across the measurement distance using a calibrated polarimeter. The standard tool is the rectangular parallelepiped having the determined birefringence for the measurement distance. The method can be used to make a set of the standard tools with different measurement distances.