Should I learn Metric now? Beginning woodworker help.

[Jon Steffen]

I will make a video.


But you can probably figure it out quite easily once you give it a try, you will see more and more ways to use it.
The thing is, woodworking is simple if you get a system down.
Then all you need is the patience and discipline to follow your system.
The biggest concern is eliminating errors.
So develop a system to eliminate as many ways that would introduce errors is the place to start.
When you begin a piece of furniture all you need is an overall length , height and width. and for most things it doesn't matter which way you get that. feet and inches, decimals or fractions millimetres or hands. or you can just sketch it out full-size and play with the proportions until it looks right. You can design it on Autocad or Solidworks or whatever and have every part to four decimal places if you want, but it won't help you achieve that accuracy unless you know how to apply that to your work. The system!

Dress your stock, straight , square and parallel, it doesn't matter what you measure it with a tape measure or digital calipers, it doesn't matter what size it is, it maybe be ten thou over or under the target, or a sixteenth it makes no difference as you will transfer for the stock itself.
Always dress extra stock. You will need pieces for story sticks and test pieces.
Always make you stock longer than you need; so that you can cut off to finish length and have cut-offs to use for transferring sizes to your story stick.
Make several story sticks. You use them for dividing spaces.
Make your story sticks square, and use all sides, when needed.

I make story sticks out of the same size stock as i make my furniture. I dress up extra stock to the same dimensions as my furniture pieces, it doesn't have to be the same wood. But something with a clear fine grain so that you can see fine knife lines.

I look forward to the video! sounds easy enough.

The lack of fractions, in general, is easier to do maths with. Especially large maths. However I will be willing to bet that his new planer has metric measurements, since it's a Hammer and not in the last country to use imperial measurements

Methinks maths would be easier too.

So, I can take from this that many people are resistant simply because of habit. Personally, yea you should learn new things. Even if you never apply them.

I'm there with ya Mike. I've learned new things and used them once or twice. Sometimes the fun is doing something in a new way, more difficult way even.

Ever start a fire with a bow? What a stupid idea when i have gasoline and a blowtorch. =) I think enough support for trying or even switching to Metric is here that i'll give it a shot.

I'm thinking that layouts of decorative glue ups will be easier (for me anyway). 300mm broken up into 5 sections 80,30,80,30,80, or 90,30,60,30,90. The numbers are more easily subtracted and added for me i guess to play around with different sizes of the pieces.

This in inches I would do something like 12" broken up into 5 sections, 2,3,2,3,2, or 3,1.5,3,1.5,3 or 2.75, 1.75, 3, 1.75, 2.75. Anyways, if anybody read the last 2 sentences and understands what I was thinking, NEAT. Its mentally slower for me to tweak the numbers in Imperial..............I just realized, its also easier to write in Metric, or Decimel Inches before Fractional Inches.

[Alex Zeller]

When I started getting into woodworking I would use decimals. That's mainly because I was use to working with fractions and US tape measures. What I found was that I was spending too much time trying to be too precise. I guess some people need that precision but, for example, if you have a cabinet that has 3 shelves equal distance apart it's been my experience that nobody is going to notice if one is 1/16th off. For example the (I need 1/3 of 2' 6 7/8"). I would go 10 5/16". If it was shelves I would put two at 10 5/16" and one at 10 1/4". As for plywood, I never assume it's the same thickness as the last sheets I bought. So I set my dado up each time. But once you get use to the number of shims and chippers needed you'll just set it up that way, run a test block through, and check to see if it's correct. I don't think about decimals if it's not exactly what I want, I just swap out a shim if needed to make it thicker or thinner. I rarely use a router to make dados but if I did I would just use the correct bit. Imperial vs metric wouldn't play a decision into it.

Woodworking should be fun for us hobbyists. If something works for you because of how you think then stick with it. If your shop is set up for one system then you have to decide if spending the money to convert it is the best way to spend your money. I don't see the US changing any time soon.

[bill epstein]

The one thing to avoid at all costs is doing conversions. That will kill your accuracy and drive you crazy. Just learn what a centimeter looks like and think in those terms. It's awkward at first and then becomes second nature. It does tend to drive my wife crazy when we're cooking because I can eyeball 500 g of flour or 100 g of butter to within a couple percent but can't for the life of me tell her how many cups or furlongs or whatever that might be.

Absolute wisdom!

[Brian Holcombe]

How is it base twelve? One inch isn't so easily divisible by three.

Twelve inches in a foot.

Inches are divisible by whatever suits your work, I have rules that are in tenths and those that are in sixteenths, and I may be mistaken but I believe there are other divisions used for construction.

I use metric when necessary since it is typically just a button on my digital stuff, but I don’t prefer it for my work. My stock sizes are setup to work off quick division into thirds on an inch scale (3/8, 3/4, 1-1/8”, 1-1/2”, 1-7/8” typically for my shop).

I’m just not so impressed by metric that I need to spend any money changing tooling to suit it.

[Roger Feeley]

I sort of go with the flow. I have wrenches, nuts and bolts in both systems. But if there is ever the political will to go fully metric, I will cheerfully retire my imperial stuff.

[Albert Lee]

Its interesting to read all the feedbacks about imperial vs metric.

10mm socket wrench please.

[mike stenson]

Its interesting to read all the feedbacks about imperial vs metric.

10mm socket wrench please.

I have about 10 of them. 5 wrenches too.

I moved a couple years ago, I found several then.

[Mark e Kessler]

Metric simplifies so much, its worth giving it a go to see if it works for you with that said i still use decimal inches and fractions if i must. Just know that it wont happen overnight so try a few projects in metric

[Curt Harms]

Rod, I also use the "14 July 2020" format for dates. And lines through my zeros. Yea, I'm a weirdo. Just ask Professor Dr. SWMBO.

Nothing weird about the zero thing. Usually I can determine whether letter O or number 0 by context but not always. I think the US military uses the day/month/year format as do Europeans. NATO thing?

[Robert Engel]

Does anyone besides me have difficulty reading mm's?

Even with my readers, I need magnification.

[Rod Sheridan]

Steve, I should have have qualified my comment by stating that the Hammer has a gauge in metric. It does not measure thickness in Imperial - this is the case world wide, I imagine. For thicknesses, everything flows from the thicknesser/planer. If the machine was scaled in Imperial, I would be working that way.

Perhaps this is making me lazy, but the simplicity of Metric is becoming ever more attractive and preferred.

Regards from Perth

Derek

The planer is 2mm/revolution on the hand wheel, which is some ungodly decimal in the Imperial system ( 0.079"/rev)

We sell both Imperial and metric gauges, I always recommend the metric one to customers........Rod.

[Rod Sheridan]

Nothing weird about the zero thing. Usually I can determine whether letter O or number 0 by context but not always. I think the US military uses the day/month/year format as do Europeans. NATO thing?

I use YYYY/MM/DD as a date format which is the ISO 8601 standard.........Rod.

[Jamie Buxton]

The planer is 2mm/revolution on the hand wheel, which is some ungodly decimal in the Imperial system ( 0.079"/rev)...

The motion per handwheel revolution is irrelevant. I just read the (decimal-inch) numbers off the Hammer's dial. It works extremely well. I routinely set it to .001". It is repeatable and accurate. I can confirm it with a micrometer, but rarely bother.

[scott vroom]

It does tend to drive my wife crazy when we're cooking because I can eyeball 500 g of flour or 100 g of butter to within a couple percent but can't for the life of me tell her how many cups or furlongs or whatever that might be.

How would one convert weight to volume in any system? A pound of flour will have a higher volume than a pound of butter.

[John Stankus]

How would one convert weight to volume in any system? A pound of flour will have a higher volume than a pound of butter.

The property is called density. (sorry for being glib ) Mass really tells you how much of something you have, volume not so much. You can pack flour tightly or loosely in the same volume and get different amounts. Many professional bakers weigh out their ingredients rather than adding by volume.

(and I'll just skip over the technical difference between mass and weight...until I have to teach it to the two sections of freshman chemistry this fall )

John