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Thread: Stupid Imperial Measure Question
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14th November 2018, 08:55 PM #46
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14th November 2018 08:55 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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14th November 2018, 09:10 PM #47
Hi,
Is our membership measured in Short Planks?
RegardsHugh
Enough is enough, more than enough is too much.
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14th November 2018, 09:15 PM #48
Paul, a super-foot or a board-foot is a volume measurement. When the wood is cut to Imperial dimensions, it doesn't matter how wide or thick it is, it's actually quite easy to calculate how many super feet you have. If it's 6 inches wide and 1 inch thick, every lineal foot is half a super foot. Because 12 is divisible by so many integers, it's just as easy to calculate when the board is 9, 8, 4, 3, 2 or 1 inches wide, and 1,2 3 or more thick. It was a very useful measure, back in the day, because wood was priced by the super-foot & I'm surprised you weren't exposed to it in your milling days, but I guess you arrived on the scene after it had been buried by the metric system. Wood is still priced by volume (per cubic metre) but that's a big pile of wood, & it's a whole lot less easy for my brain to convert a cubic metre into x number of chests of drawers or tables!
As for cupping, shrinkage, splitting & surface-checking, well, I seem to recall that happened much the same with wood cut to either Imperial or metric units....
Cheers,IW
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14th November 2018, 09:49 PM #49
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14th November 2018, 09:55 PM #50
Woodturning blank.
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15th November 2018, 07:44 AM #51
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15th November 2018, 12:59 PM #52
Then there is the good old standard measurement only found outside of major Australian cities, the country mile, ask any farmer, he will tell you how far it is, then there's the city slickers method of determining time "be with you in a sec".....10 minutes later or the the transport industry standard "next day delivery" they don't nominate the day (Sunday, Monday, etc)
The person who never made a mistake never made anything
Cheers
Ray
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18th November 2018, 11:17 AM #53
What a coincidence the definition for a bunch of metric units have just been redefined
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/s...asurement.html
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18th November 2018, 03:20 PM #54
Not quite true, Ian.
A nautical mile is precisely one minute of longitude anywhere, and approximately one minute of latitude at the equator. In navigation, you therefore always scale from longitude.
Even the metric countries navigate in nautical miles and measure wind and boat speed in knots - a nautical mile per hour.
A few hundred years ago it was thought that the world was a little smaller and that a nautical mile was 6,000 feet or 1,000 fathoms long. Thus a fathom was a metric of a nautical mile. When the error was discovered the length of a nautical mile was left at one minute of longitude, but "adjusted" to 6,076 feet; a fathom is still 6 feet and there are now 1,012.667 fathoms to the nautical mile, a rather awkward relationship.
If the opportunity had been taken to simultaneously adjust the length of the fathom so that it remained at one thousanth of a nautical mile or minute of longitude then we would have a metric unit in navigatin. And iiif a metre had been defined at 1 fathom long then the navigation and other measurement systems would coincide......
Lots of ifs!
Cheers
Graeme
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18th November 2018, 03:27 PM #55
How true.
But I have just returned from a visit to Japan and China. The Japanese do not have a word for dozen and their chooks considerately lay eggs in batches of 5 and 10.
But the Chinese do have a word for dozen (dǎ in standard Chinese) and their chooks obligingly do lay eggs in batches of 12!
Cheers
Graeme
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19th November 2018, 12:24 AM #56
Thank you Graeme, we really should try and meet up over a coffee or beer some day.
When I said "approximately" I was being a bit pedantic and allowing for the fact that the earth is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid (AlexS will know what we are talking about so the distance equivalent to 1 degree of latitude varies depending on where you are on the spheroid -- 6110 feet (1861 m) at the poles and 6050 feet (1843 m) at the equator. The international definition os 1852 m. Perhaps BobL will come along and convert that to the equivalent number of wavelengths of a Helium-Neon laserregards from Alberta, Canada
ian
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19th November 2018, 02:18 PM #57
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19th November 2018, 03:54 PM #58
That's gold
Bit like ordering a hamburger but all you get is beef unless you order a bacon and egg roll then you get your hamThe person who never made a mistake never made anything
Cheers
Ray
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19th November 2018, 04:14 PM #59
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19th November 2018, 05:11 PM #60
actually, I was down your way in August
regards from Alberta, Canada
ian
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