Going metric

Conversion is insane. Does anyone tell anyone to go to the store and buy a half gallon of milk anymore? No! Why? Because everyone has learned that a two litre bottle is about what they need. 

My Mother (God rest her soul) would to this day make herself crazy every trip to the store doing conversions.  But I will bet few people can tell you many cups or quarts a 2 liter bottle is.

If your working from plans written in Imperial your are almost forced to work in imperial, similarly if you are working with plans in Metric you will make yourself crazy doing the conversions so work in metric.  If your working without plans use metric it is easier to figure or use a story stick. 

Point is don't make youself crazy constantly doing conversions.

 
I have not read this entire thread, so please excuse me if I am repeating someone.  I have a calculator that I keep in my shop that I find very useful.  It is called "Construction Master Pro DT".  Among many other calculations, it quickly converts between Imperial and metric.  Entries can be made in feet and/or inches and converted to meters or millimeters, and vice versa.  I keep the calculator in a zip lock bag so I can use it and protect it from dust.  They make these calculators in several sizes.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-alias=tools&field-brandtextbin=Calculated%20Industries
 
Good conversation gentlemen

I've had seventeen years switching back and forth between imperial/metric and find metric much more logical. Just move the decimal and there you go.

My problem arises from the fact that I have several more calculations to visualize longer distances in metric, I guess I'm converting it to imperial.

Although I'll switch back and forth if it's under 150mm.

On to the .5mm to big for accuracy- I've been thinking about this for some time. One of my coworkers' was complaining about it being difficult to find a tape

w/ 1/32's on it. Right there I realized that I never use the 1/32's On any ruler or tape I always split the 1/16, calling it shy or heavy and when it really

matters just shy or just heavy. Lest you think I am some hack-I am a  cabinet/furniture maker  -some one just paid my boss some thing like 25grand

for me to build and install a oak kitchen island( alright I'm done patting my self on the back-just trying to establish my bonafidis).

I mean think about it most pencil lines are at least .5mm. I guess you could use a knife( I do a lot) but to be useful the Knife  cut would have to be

approaching .33mm.

One could some up my approach as try to split the pencil line and pray.

One of my favorite tools is my 6" rule- just shy of  a 1/16th thick, two .5" scales on the ends, metric on one side imperial on the other. The imperial side has

1/16's and 32nd's and I never look at the 32nd side I just put the 1/16th side down there and split up the sixteenth.

When I use Imperial I do it in decimal .125, .4375, etc.

T-bone

 
Groggy said:
Have to laugh whenever I see these threads. It is like listening to people argue whether using a spanner or a socket is a better method to remove a screw. The answer is neither. Marking to fit, story sticks etc are the way to go. No matter how good you are at measuring, there is always movement and differences between the ruler on the bench, the tape measure and the scale on the TS.

Unless this discussion is for carpentry only?  ;)
[/quote}

I have to partially agree. Story sticks are definitely the way to go, I try to use a tape measure as little as possible.

Having said that, I studied microbiology in college, so mm and ml were pretty common. I think the only way to go is to switch all your measuring tools out to metric rulers and tapes. I'm going to do this Real Soon Now.
Click to expand...
 
tvogel400 said:
I mean think about it most pencil lines are at least .5mm. I guess you could use a knife( I do a lot) but to be useful the Knife  cut would have to be

approaching .33mm.
Click to expand...

I always use a box cutter for marking. It's less than 1/10th of a mm. I don't like pencils, not for precision work.
 
I use a hair, that has been split across the entire length, then split again.
Only problem it is a curly strand.  ;)

Seriously, pencils, sharp ones like the Swiss 2mm one with the sharpener in the lid are good. Do you get them in the states?
For even better precision I use the Talmeter as a story stick and use the marker on that, it is a very fine line. For crucial stuff I too mark with a sharp blade instead of pencil. Good lighting is not always available on site so the pencil gets the most use on site where I would have a hard time seeing the Talmeter/blade mark. On more than one occasion I have marked it with the Talmeter and then remarked it with the sharpened pencil.

 
Steveo48 said:
Eli said:
Honestly, I've found that in making the switch, the largeness of the millimetre was more than equally offset by my previous dismal use of fractional measurement. Overall, I'd say my accuracy is greatly improved by removing fractional math, but then, I'm a math numpty, born a book nerd. I still hold the wood in place and mark it whenever I can, and then cut it three more times until it fits.

"5 inches and the big mark past 7/16ths plus 7 and 3/8ths inches = no clue. "
Click to expand...

I worked with Italian terrazzo finishers, and when reading the rule back to them, they would say in their accented english (that they learned in Kentucky), " Ah doan care abou the liddle ones, jus tell meh abou the BIG ones".  "Fractions" were measured off their thumbnail. 

I bet Tinker could add to this.
Click to expand...

Ven I vas learning to do shtone verk, i worked mit an old Cherman mason.  When i would try something new, he would watch me and then he would say, "Vel, dat vey vas alriigtd, butd, dis vey vuda vas bedter."
Tinker
 
Henrik, 44 years ago, i met a sweet Cherman lady.  she gelernt me to say "ya" before she taught me "nine"  As a result, after 43 years (in another month) of wedded bliss, i now know that when she says "Arbeit , gerade eben, auf die schnelle!", I damned well better get moving.

A few years ago, sometime after we got married, I was pulling out of a side street here in Ridgefield.  It was during rush hour and i had to pick my spot to pull out into traffic with my dump truck and trailer loaded with my backhoe. A heavy load on a steep hill.  Since I was pulling up a fairly long hill, i could not gain any speed, even after i got to the top.  As I was pulling the hill, a car came up behind me with a driver who was, to say the least, somewhat perplexed that I had the nerve to hold him up when he was in a hurry.  he started blowing his horn and trying to sneak past me either left side or right.  i knew he was angry, but felt I had at least some right to be on the road.  In my unmistakeably sweet dispositioned way, I sort of took up both lanes of the road.  I managed to hold hm back thru nearly half a mile and two traffic lites, finally giving him room to pull along side of me at the third lite which had just turned yellow as I gotten there.

As he pulled to a stop beside my truck, he started yelling.  i motioned for him to open his window so i could hear him.  He did so and started cursing me with a vocabulary that might have made the paint on my truck peel if he had been any closer.  I sort of kept watching for the lite to change and kept motioning with my hand cupping my ear that I could not hear him.  he finally got out of his car and yelled across the top. By then, he was, I believe, actually getting a little excited and I think everybody within a whole block could hear him yelling. About the time the lite changed, I replied to him in what i perceived as my very best German accent, "Nicht verstehen!".  The guy about bleew a gasket as he pounded the top of his car, jumped into his car and left rubber all the way across the intersection.  I guess he must have understood German.  ::) ;D
 
Tinker and Henrik,

That exchange between you two was hilarious!!  Thanks.  :D
Tinker, congratulations to you and your little "Cherman" Fraulein.

Dave R.
 
Hi all,

I mean no disrespect to anyone - really - but today I as in the middle school in this economically deprived region talking with 6th,7th and 8th graders, many of whom have never known one mother or one father and who have learned the hard way to call everyone who enters their "house", trailer or whatever, "uncle".  One bright eyed student asked, "do I need a degree in math to become a furniture maker"?  The answer is obviously, no, but as I explained to this class you do need to know how to tell if something is a right angle or a rhombus.  I thought I was wandering off into never never land when one student jumped up to say, "all you need to do is see if the diagonals are the same"!  Right answer and it has nothing to do with how one might "measure" those distances, only that they are the same.  The kid could use the same belt that the "uncle" the night before might have beat him senseless with as a story stick, or another kid might have used the most accurate ruler in the world, while yet another might use a hunk of firewood, the  only thing that matters is whether the distance is the same.

Think....measure....or whatever in inches or metric; makes no difference.  Adopt what works for you and go back to working wood. 
For those of us who find measuring in metric, or those who find measuring in fractional inches easier, go for it.

Sorry for the rant, but every time I come in contact with kids who are experiencing a world I never knew, I come away humbled and much more focused on what is really important.  My POV remains, think in inches, measure in metric, and build really nice stuff.

Jerry
 
Hey Jerry,
growing up can be a rough affair. Sad to hear that story. Yes, I agree, there are so much things that are more important than a simple inch or cm.

One of the main issues with the metric/imperial is conformity. I totally agree that whatever measure you use to get it done properly is good.
But the issue, as I see it, is flexibility and getting to know what the rest of the world uses on a daily basis. Imperial users ARE a minority, no matter how you put it and it does not degrade it for practical purposes it is just that metric is acknowledged as THE global world standard. Imperial is deeply rooted in the US and will not likely vanish overnight but I would suggest that if you can you should give metric a go - maybe not for using on a daily basis but just to grasp it - it is dead easy and might prove valuable with time. 

Both systems have their merits with metric being the universal one (outside of the US) and easier to deal with volumes and such. Nothing would stop you from sticking with imperial even if you learnt metric.

What if you were offered a real nice job doing your favourite type of woodworking, overseas, for a month, a year - or the rest of your life? And they wouldn't take you on as everyone else there is using metric and they don't want a Babels Tower of Imperialists screwing up the measurements? I heard of one guy from the US who married a Sweedie and he was trying for jobs doing carpentry but they would not have him, they simply said: we use metrics and if you can't do it we have no use for you as it would mess things up for us. But learn it and come back. He wasn't to keen on switching and ended up working with something else, I don't know the full story - whether he was "too proud" to switch or not eager enough but had he learnt it he might have had a few good years doing carpentry over here.

I am trying to learn Imperial (slow going) and I am not looking at trying for jobs in the US, it is just that is fun to learn how to visualize things in different measurements. I have friends in Canada and they are all engineers and all metric savvy so no problems if helping them out with the house.  ;)

Crash course for metric beginners:
(smaller measurements are left out at this stage, if I wrote them you would not be able to see them, they are that small)

1 mm; Millimeter, where it all begins and the denomination that woodworkers use for measurements
10 mm = 1 cm; Centimeter what ordinary people express lengths in together with meters
100mm/10cm = 1dm; Decimeter which people use when they roughly describe lengths (and box volume by taking WxDxH in dm and get litres straight away.)
1000mm/100cm/10dm = 1 Meter.
1000m = 1Km, one "click" Distances are described as Km and seldom as Miles. Except for rough estimates when driving/flying.
10Km = 1 Mile. (Mil in Swedish)

Area:
1m2 = 100x100cm 
1Ha = 100x100m or 10 000 m2
1Km2 = 1000x1000m

If I am building something I use millimeters regardless of size, it can end up being 1030mm wide which can be expressed as 103cm or 1.03M. For accuracys sake I write everything in millimeters. Laymen often use centimeters when ordering something, often ending up with... "...and a half" suggesting that they should have used millimeters. People who are describing objects often say something like "it was something like one and twenty wide" suggesting that it was 1.2m wide or 120cm or 1200mm. Confusing? No, it's just people who are confusing.

If you talk about peoples height you use centimeters. I am 174 cm, or 1.74m. You usually say it as "one and seventyfour". Short people who are 153.5cm find that half a cm verrrry important and express it as "one-fiftythree-and-a-half".  :D You don't say I am 1740mm. 

If you talk about snow you can express it in meters, decimeters OR centimeters depending on what is approapriate. Again, dm are roughing it up. like saying: "we had a dm of snow yesterday" Or "the water puddle was two dm deep". If you know you got 15cm of snow you say 15cm and 1 1/2dm, unless you want to impress people as expressing snow depth dm sounds bigger/deeper than cm. 

If you are giving directions you use meters, or kilometers or miles. "Oh, the entrance is around the corner, some 15m". Or, "just drive down some 200m and turn left then 50m then drive 200m and then turn left again and after approx. 50m you are back here again and I will give you the distance in feet. Or yards". ;)

"Ah, you are going to Stockholm? It is some 7km from here, just turn left at the intersection."

(for some reason people not often use N S E W when giving directions in Sweden, most people can't even tell where N S E W is)

This whole reply measures some 350mm from top to bottom but goes much deeper than that. Measurements may vary depending on screen size and font on your Imperial screens. It might even come out askew. :)

 
Henrik R / Pingvinlakrits said:
...

If you talk about snow you can express it in meters, decimeters OR centimeters depending on what is approapriate. Again, dm are roughing it up. like saying: "we had a dm of snow yesterday" Or "the water puddle was two dm deep". If you know you got 15cm of snow you say 15cm and 1 1/2dm, unless you want to impress people as expressing snow depth dm sounds bigger/deeper than cm.   

...
Click to expand...

Had to call my boss the other day to tell him I couldn't go to work since there were 20 cm (that's 8 inches for the uninitiated) snow in front of my door. He is kind of a suspicious character so I had to send him a photo as proof ...

[attachimg=1]

PS: the measure tape is with centimeters  ::)
 
I never have to work with inches, but I come across them a lot here on the internet and in the movies, and I always just have to remember one thing.

1 inch = 25,4 mm or 2,54 cm.

That's all.

 
 
I made the jump today.  I ordered some metric self adhesive tape to add to the Kreg fence that I use with my Kapex and I also ordered a true 32 measuring tape to start using.  I'm looking forward to having everything mesh with the Festool system.
 
HA! Meldegaard, you are awesome... I'll have to use that one sometime soon.

Jerry, you're right on.

I dunno, after a while, I think it's better to take a page from the old school. Use a story stick. Fractional inches, mm, honey-nut cheerios, or smoots,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot

...it doesn't really matter. They're all different ways of describing a certain distance in a meaningful way. I heard a story once about a guy... real intellectual nutcase, but cool... who went out into the woods and built a house, using a random length as his standard unit of measurement, and he kept the prototype stick on his mantel. I kinda like the idea, personally... its' a serious luddite, back to the really really basics kind of thing.

I'll be dollars to donuts that when UFOs finally land, their system of measurement won't be metric or SAE. We'll be able to measure their stuff that way, but it probably won't be what they used.

Systems of measurement vary, measurements from one tape to the next can vary, standards of variance can change... and in the end, all of it is arbitrary. I still use inches, and I'm used to it, I think it's very easy to divide things in half that way, but in the end, the only real point of having a standardized system of measurement is that it's something that's agreed upon, and dimensions can be transmitted without having to send a story stick via FedEx and hoping they don't lose the address.

(They lost my address on a package of japanese chisels a week and some ago. I asked them how the hell that was even possible, that they picked up a package without getting the address, somehow. Software glitch, or something, which I can rationally comprehend, but I was still dumbfounded. The one really relevant piece of information regarding that package, and their job with regard to that package, and they lost it/didn't accept it. I feel bad for the poor woman who had to deal with my call... no one gets paid enough to handle that level of flabbergasted wtf incomprehensible frustration.)

It's a funny conversation, to be sure, and I'm thinking of switching, just to keep the grey matter working. But in the end, I think the relevant measurement is always to be found on the work itself, as built.

 
when the aliens arrive the will be using SAE,,,,, they have to be smart enough to handle fractions and the responsibility and power that goes along with it.
 
daveg said:
If you live in an all metric country (and, I'm not saying that I would care for that), then metric is simple. However, in the real world, there are those of us that live in countries that were industrialized based on imperial measure. .........
Click to expand...

By your definition, "the real world" is USA, Liberia & Myanmar, because they are the only countries in the world which have not adopted the metric system. Australia (my country) was using the imperial system until some 30 years ago, and whilst the conversion to metric was not without its problems, it really was the sensible thing to do. I don't expect USA to change any time soon though. ::)
 
why,  just as a fallow the french counter weight to post ww2 USA dominance. actually if you use the ww2 analogy of success imperial won out over metric.just because a bunch of third rate countries changed to it after ww2 does not mean it was correct.it is just a arbitrary measuring system that is based on 10 units just like imperial with the limitation on no- fraction, boy that is convenient. but hey some people do not like choice. ;D  ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top