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Metric System

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Here in canada you Always buy two of everything. One metric ,one imperial. And then you put them in the same box labeled say "allen keys" , then curse and swear and go through every one when you need to fix something. Not that I would do something like that:rolleyes:.
Had to change out my chuck yesterday :mad:.
 

Emiliano Achaval

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I'm a fan of both. Metric is great for so many things, especially those divisible by 10. Perfect for engineering. Great for so much.

The one place the imperial system is superior in my opinion, is woodworking. A cm is a silly measurement for human proportion and things we use on a daily basis—sure you can get used to it. But an inch is a glorious thing, because we can divide it in half again and again and it's still a measurement we can conceptualize and do simple math between our ears. From framing a house right down to cabinetry, imperial is king...wait a minute, isn't that where we got imperial???

As the son of a machinist, I was raised hearing long passionate lectures about how thousands of an inch are far superior for fine measurements. I can't succinctly repeat the reasons having barely worked in those fine tolerances myself...what do you think, Odie?
I grew up with metric, as I stand earlier. I can do what you are saying you can do with the metric, but not the us! lol Main thing, obviously both work...
 
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Main thing, obviously both work...

Absolutely, Emiliano. I think it benefits us to work in both metric and imperial—stretches our brain in a way that's uncomfortable at first, just like speaking a foreign language.

When I was 17 I left home and lived in New Zealand for a year where suddenly I had to eat with a fork in my left hand and communicate in metric to anyone under 40. In my early 20s I worked as a carpenter for a while in Canada in both metric and standard. Metric will never be my first choice for most things, but I'm glad I developed the brain "muscles" to do it. We become better people by trying new things, especially as we get older.

Maybe I'll head out to the shop, put my lathe in reverse and turn on the other side for a while... :D
 

john lucas

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Running a photographic Darkroom for 20 years I was constantly working with metric and imperial. Somethings came one way, and other came others so I just dealt with it. In my own shop I use metric when it's easier and inches when they are easier. I was hard to find a metric folding rule.
 
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I also remember the halfway "conversion" decades ago. From an impact viewpoint, I had to buy metric sockets, wrenches, etc. So now when fixing something, and the socket doesn't quite fit, I have to dig through a bigger pile to pick out the appropriate size... And nuts, bolts and screws are totally out of control... The only bright side is that I recently bought one of those inexpensive digital calipers that reads fractional inches, decimal inches or metric units at the push of a button... Now that is useful!

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!

Ely
 

john lucas

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Zach I saw Graeme Priddle start a demo one time. He had the lathe in reverse and put the bowl gouge underneath the tool rest and turned on the bottom side of the turning. Everyone started laughing of course and he said "what's so funny, don't you all turn this way.
 
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As a woodworker - well sort of - in Canada, my irritation is that Canada only partly adopted metric. We buy plywood in 4 x 8 sheets. We buy 2 x 4's. Even Oneway, a canadian made lathe, measures swing in inches.

But, we buy gas in litres, lunch meat in grams and measure temperature in celsius. Then, just to really mix things up, we don't care how many miles per gallon we get out of our cars. Instead, we care about how many litres of gas per 100 kilometers we burn.
 
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As a woodworker - well sort of - in Canada, my irritation is that Canada only partly adopted metric. We buy plywood in 4 x 8 sheets. We buy 2 x 4's. Even Oneway, a canadian made lathe, measures swing in inches.

But, we buy gas in litres, lunch meat in grams and measure temperature in celsius. Then, just to really mix things up, we don't care how many miles per gallon we get out of our cars. Instead, we care about how many litres of gas per 100 kilometers we burn.

Grant, you know politicians will always keep on fixing things, even when it isn’t broken, until it is :rolleyes:

The chicken farmers dropped the ball I’m sure, as they had the chance to sell eggs in ten-packs instead of the dozen pack for the same prize ;).

Oh and calling a 2x4 a five by ten, should work fine as these numbers don’t really give the real dimensions anyway :D

122x244 makes for a standard sheet of plywood, cm we mean, all the rest of the world is using the metric system and the same material, maybe we don’t even know that the material is already metric what we buy, 10 mm thick plywood or twelve, we call it ⅜ or ½” !! :confused:
 
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When I worked for the US Forest Service, we used chains as unit measure quite a bit. Ten square chains equals one acre. If I remember correctly a chain is 66.6 ft. How knots fit the measuring systems I am not sure. Allyn
 
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Funny about the Neanderthals! I've heard current theories that suggest our ancestors interbred with them. If true, probably all the modern Neanderthal nuckleheads like myself show a preference for the imperial system. :)

A knot does makes sense. Boat and ship people use knots all the time for navigation. A nautical mile is 1/60th of a degree of latitude. The divisions on nautical charts are in 60ths. So as an example, my neighbors just sailed to the 80th degree of latitude, way north of Alaska. Because there are 90 degrees of latitude, I can quickly know that they came within 600 nautical miles of the North Pole. That's a measurement at least I can understand, because all navigation by boat around here is in knots. You can just add about 10% to get statute miles.

Because latitude is still used as a division of 90 from the equator (180 between poles), kilometers don't have an easy equivalent with lattitude. It's a bit like hours and minutes...they make intuitive sense if you're accustomed to them.
 

Bill Boehme

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Zach that there is a Neanderthal, and you know what happened to them :p

According to National Geographic, the Neanderthal are alive and well among those of us who are of European or Asian descent as they interbred with Homo sapiens. If you have red hair, you might be more Neanderthal than average.
 

hockenbery

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A knot does makes sense. Boat and ship people use knots all the time for navigation. A nautical mile is 1/60th of a degree of latitude. The divisions on nautical charts are in 60ths

The original definition of the kilometer was that it would be 10,000 of them from the equator to the pole along a meridian. A very similar definition to the knot since that is also a 90 degree arc of latitude.

This would make the Meter 1/10,000,000 of that distance. When French made the calculations they came up with a meter that was .02 mm short and that became the standard.
 

Bill Boehme

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The original definition of the kilometer was that it would be 10,000 of them from the equator to the pole along a meridian. A very similar definition to the knot since that is also a 90 degree arc of latitude.

This would make the Meter 1/10,000,000 of that distance. When French made the calculations they came up with a meter that was .02 mm short and that became the standard.

It ought to be noted that the SI system (what we refer to as metric) isn't purely decimal. There are still 24 hours per day and 360 degrees in a circle. Nautical miles and knots make a lot of sense for navigation and are used for both ship and aircraft navigation. The grad unit for angle measurement never caught on ... 100 grads vs. 90 degrees in a quarter circle .... Why would 400 grads be any better than 360 degrees in a full circle. At one time the speed of light was defined as three hundred million meters per second ... then it was discovered that this isn't exactly correct so something had to give. The speed of light is a constant so the meter was defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second. Imagine if that had been the original proposed definition of the meter ... It surely would have been DOA.
 
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It ought to be noted that the SI system (what we refer to as metric) isn't purely decimal. There are still 24 hours per day and 360 degrees in a circle. Nautical miles and knots make a lot of sense for navigation and are used for both ship and aircraft navigation. The grad unit for angle measurement never caught on ... 100 grads vs. 90 degrees in a quarter circle .... Why would 400 grads be any better than 360 degrees in a full circle. At one time the speed of light was defined as three hundred million meters per second ... then it was discovered that this isn't exactly correct so something had to give. The speed of light is a constant so the meter was defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second. Imagine if that had been the original proposed definition of the meter ... It surely would have been DOA.


Bill,

Mostly good stuff there but you are wrong to suggest that the length of a day has any bearing on the characterization of the System International de Unité. If you insist on using the SI system, then the time it takes for the Earth to make one rotation is 86.4 kiloseconds. It's more convenient for folks who otherwise use SI units to use days or years as units of time (or if you a geologist like me, millions of years) than using the official SI unit, the second. Days are not SI, hours are not SI. Nothing but seconds is SI. That doesn't mean using days or years is a bad idea, but once you do, you are using a hybrid (or at the very least, derived) system. So, SI is 100% decimal. When important things we need to measure don't come out as even powers of ten, it is the fault of the things, not the measuring system.
 

Bill Boehme

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The metric system isn't any better nor worse than the
Just wondering what the length of a day or distance to the pole from the equator has to do with turning?

How many days would it take to turn a pole that long? Woodturners usually don't measure things except using the thumb and eyeball system.
 
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Measuring the depth of a bowl is now pretty easy if you just hold a flash light across the rim
of the bowl and turn the light on while counting how long it takes before the light illuminates
the bottom of the bowl. :)
 
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