Thread: Metric / Imperial relationship reference

Originally Posted by DaveVman

OK - so this is not directed at you [ian] but to illustrate what just part of issue is. Quite frankly the following are the thoughts that are going through my head during these transactions and I bet that 95% of people under 60 and outside USA/UK are the same, even though we usually don't express them. (I feel sorry for Canadians to be honest).

For just one example, if I am going to lay down 4 figures of my hard earned cash on a new machine then why would someone try to tell me it's capacity in units from pre-roman times?

<scenario>

"Please buy this 8 inch jointer.."

- What the F*&^ is 8 inches??????
- Don't answer that because I don't give a flying rat's rear end what it is. Why would I?

- Listen, I am the customer. It is not my job to go away and research ancient history and translate that to something meaningful. That is your job. It is called marketing. Look it up. It's another one of those innovations that occurred over the last 1,000 years that you seem to have missed.

- Just how good can this machine be given that it appears to have come out of some archeological dig site? What happens when I need a part for it made in the current century?

</scenario>

so as the sales person my response would be

-- well sir, if you would prefer a unit manufactured in metric units, I have this very nice Hammer 260 mm wide unit or perhaps sir would prefer a 300 mm wide unit?



my point ...
whether we like it or not the US wood working market is where the lower cost Asian manufactures target their machines.
We can accept this and live with the imperial dimensions or individually get our knickers in a knot.
Or limit our purchasing to machines made primarily for the European market.


but as I keep repeating -- wood doesn't give a stuff whether a mortice is 1/4" or 6mm wide. But your grooving plane does. As long as you team your tools, any unit of measurement system will do.

But at the end of the day the marks on a rule are just marks -- And once you accept that principle, a rule with imperial marks is as useful as a rule with metric marks.


BUT for others following this thread, small measures in YouTube vids, are almost always nominal -- which means the exact measure doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by DaveVman

OK - so this is not directed at you

I figured it wasn't, but thank you anyway

Originally Posted by BobL

energy is "Ergs"

Fred Dag (John Clarke) liked Ergs, I always thought it was some dumb word he had made up....

Originally Posted by Handyjack

Sometimes we will just need to live with imperial.
How high do you fly? Do you want to join the 'mile' high club. Flight altitude is expressed in feet.

Quite right! But few people other than pilots know that it has to be a nautical mile to qualify.

The packaging industry in the US mixes both systems. 38mm cap with 6 turns per inch thread. Fortunately for all, their armed forces are all metric.

The downside of metric is that 4/3 of people don't understand fractions.

mick