I must be OLD! I HATE the Metric System!!

[John Gornall]

That site is an interesting read, thanks

[Ben Ellenberger]

But there is a more important question: do you use the US Survey foot or the new International Standard foot?


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/s...e=articleShare

[Derek Cohen]

I started out in the Imperial world, and then Metric was introduced when I was 10 or 11 years. As a result, I am fairly comfortable with either.

Until about 5 or 6 years ago, my preference was Imperial. This was largely due to using hand tools, and slaving the sizes. For example, a 1/4” groove, or a 1/2” dado. It was convenient to be able to swap between plough blade and chisel. I made sense then to use drill bits that matched these as well.

What I like about Imperial is that the larger increments (in inches and feet) make it easier to break down and visualise long parts. But when it comes to smaller sections, Metric is preferred since there is no need to work in fractions. Metric gets very busy in the larger sizes.

Since the past 5 years I have been increasingly moving to Metric. This has been essentially forced on me by my Hammer A3-31 jointer-thicknesser/planer. European machines are all metric, and the digital gauge for the thicknesser is Metric. As soon as a base measurement is established, it affects all up the line. For many years my builds have included both Metric and Imperial, as I would just use the measure closest to the line on the rule (although most if the time I do not measure - part sizes are transferred by a cutting gauge). Increasingly I use Metric and add in the Imperial size for US readers. Interesting, more and more US readers appear to use Metric now.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Erich Weidner]

I don't really care if we (US) switch to metric for the most part. I can't think in metric, but with practice it would come.
But you can only take away miles per hour over my cold dead body.

Interestingly enough, while visiting the UK, I noticed that though the country is metric the speed limit signs are still in MPH.

[Brian Holcombe]

.1mm is .0039” so not very useful on the small end wrt such units and I’ve found it less than ideal for person scale measures also.

There is good reason that imperial has remained popular in machining and building trades, it’s easy it’s quickly convertible between decimal and fraction in your head and easily visible.

Metric is an ideal standard in my opinion, the fact that a standard can be derived locally using testing rather than relying upon an artifact. That doesn’t make it more practical in my workshop but I do use it on occasion.

[Halgeir Wold]

For precision work, we use micrometers....which is quite more accurate than thousands of an inch.... For some years, I even had to work with Angstroms and nanometers....

I can assure all of you that prefer imperial, that all your objections to metric are no problems i practical work, and for larger measures and sizes, air fields, air planes, roads and oil rigs are built with metrics without any problems, - and in the rare cases there are problems, it's not due to the metric system.
What I do see, though, is that this is mostly a question of what we are used to. Most of Europe has been metric for a couple of centuries now, but when I grew up during the late 50s and 60s, construction lumber was stil referred to as 2x4s and so on. My generation and older folks still refer to 2x4, 2x8s, even if we know very well that is not what will be listed on an invoice......Plumbing was all imperial, and to some extent still is, even if metric conduit has taken over most of the market.
At work I've been using both systems for well over 40 years - I just don't see all those problems.... it¨s all in our minds...

[Andrew Seemann]

.1mm is .0039” so not very useful on the small end wrt such units and I’ve found it less than ideal for person scale measures also.

There is good reason that imperial has remained popular in machining and building trades, it’s easy it’s quickly convertible between decimal and fraction in your head and easily visible.

Metric is an ideal standard in my opinion, the fact that a standard can be derived locally using testing rather than relying upon an artifact. That doesn’t make it more practical in my workshop but I do use it on occasion.

My dislike of woodworking (and to an extent machining) in metric has to do with the unit sizes. Centimeters are too small, it seems like you need a ton of them to measure anything, but millimeters are too big for small measurements but too small for big measurements. And still, 0.1mm is too small to be of use in woodworking (yet too big for machining). In machining, you get to where you have tools that resolve in 0.05mm or 0.02mm, which kind off blows out the whole significant digit thing.

Metric is good for converting between units and for base 10 math and sciency stuff, but but as Brian says, there is a reason that the yard-foot-inch-fraction system evolved in the building trades and remains popular. It is a more "natural" system for geometric layout with dividers, compasses, and squares, and by definition it is more human scaled.

When the French came up with the metric system, it would have been so much simpler if they would have just kept the inch and based everything off of that, rather than doing some grandiose Enlightenment hair-brained scheme of a meter being one ten millionth of the equator to the north pole. Most European countries already used inches, and they were mostly the same size already.

[Brian Holcombe]

For precision work, we use micrometers....which is quite more accurate than thousands of an inch.... For some years, I even had to work with Angstroms and nanometers....

I can assure all of you that prefer imperial, that all your objections to metric are no problems i practical work, and for larger measures and sizes, air fields, air planes, roads and oil rigs are built with metrics without any problems, - and in the rare cases there are problems, it's not due to the metric system.
What I do see, though, is that this is mostly a question of what we are used to. Most of Europe has been metric for a couple of centuries now, but when I grew up during the late 50s and 60s, construction lumber was stil referred to as 2x4s and so on. My generation and older folks still refer to 2x4, 2x8s, even if we know very well that is not what will be listed on an invoice......Plumbing was all imperial, and to some extent still is, even if metric conduit has taken over most of the market.
At work I've been using both systems for well over 40 years - I just don't see all those problems.... it¨s all in our minds...

The same tool exists in imperial....

[John Gornall]

Then there's nautical miles- not really metric or imperial. Originally defined as the distance along a line of longitude of 1 minute of latitude. However this varies close to the poles as the earth flattens so it has been defined as a certain distance in modern times. This is no quirky thing of the past as it's the distance measurement used for sea, air, and space travel. So It's a chart not a map and you read distances on the sides of the chart with your dividers. Also your latitude so they know where to find you. But now the chart is in a drawer just in case and you cruise by computer and GPS - mine even has a single button to press which sends out a mayday call with my lat and long position. Haven't used it.

[Erich Weidner]

We've sort of been metric for a long time. Even the US imperial measurements are shifted for metric, they're not the same as the UK imperial measurements. Well, with the exception of temperature.

I don't know what the origin of the differences between UK Imperial and US Imperial are, but I suspect it isn't to do with metric. Perhaps just the US deciding to be different.

But the only important thing to know is that a UK pint is 20 UK ounces which is in volume bigger than a US pint at 16 US ounces. Even though the UK ounce is less than a US ounce, they still put in more beer. (UK pint being about 19 US ounces as I recall w/o googling). And they have laws about not under pouring your pint of beer. I love that about the Brits!

Hmm... I'm going to go fetch a pint right now (though it will take a bottle and then some to fill my UK pint glass to the rim... mmm beer).

[Jim Koepke]

Then there is the strange system of measurment making an ounce of silver heavier than an ounce of sand even though a pound of sand is heavier than a pound of silver.

jtk

[mike stenson]

I don't know what the origin of the differences between UK Imperial and US Imperial are, but I suspect it isn't to do with metric. Perhaps just the US deciding to be different.
.

A US fluid ounce is 30ml, where an imperial fluid ounce is 28.413. Yes, we did metricize imperial.

Since you went with pints

[Halgeir Wold]

The main reason behind the metric system, was to get rid of all the different units that by themselves was different from country to country, and even between different regions. As an example, - the inch as an imperial measure has lent its name from the roman "uncia", I think the roman definitn of size was the width of the thumb at the first joint. In Scandinavia the old unit was called "thumbs" for the same reason. Here in Norway we have at least three different "thumbs", four if we include a former swedish definition. Todays definition of an inch is actually derived from metrics, as 25,4 millimeters, - close enough from the old scottisch inch that by modern conversion was 25,444 mm...or something thereabouts...

[Erich Weidner]

A US fluid ounce is 30ml, where an imperial fluid ounce is 28.413. Yes, we did metricize imperial.

Interesting, I never would have suspected that.

[James Pallas]

If you need to work with decimals in imperial just buy an engineers tape. You can work to hundredth off the tape and thousandth by easy decimal. You will also find a tenth and hundredth scales on a rafter square or Starrett combo squares with the right blades.