metric to inches

[mikesc]

When I visualise that..I rough it to 1/300.000.000 and then imagine "the second" , or the light, if you will stretched out to a seconds worth, and then chopped into 300.000.000 pieces..Might very well not be an accurate visualisation, but it doesn't worry me..I'm happy knowing that ( if we leave aside singularities and so on ) that how far the light goes ( and thus a metre ) is the same everywhere, and not dependent on variations in human digits..( Sorry , could not resist that one ; )

Pipe and pipe fittings here are supplied in imperial, but sold in metric..so yes they do try to sell 2" pipe as 50mm..and succeed..but then most people buying and selling stuff nowadays cannot "make change" without a cash register or a calculator to do the really simple maths for them.

Wood is sold as metric width, metric thickness, but the lengths are all ( in reality) in feet and inches..usually wall battens are 2.40 metres long..which is nearly 7'11"..and if you allow for an average floor board being 1" thick ( 25mm ) you set your joists to 8' vertical separation..and it all fits..But makes for low ceilings in modern houses..our place is older*, so ceilings are higher, which means that replacing battens makes them short, so a lot of adding in extra lengths..and yet "standard" sheetrock reaches nearly floor to ceiling ( allowing for a 30cm skirting board ) makes renovating a PITA.

*This house is nearly a 100 years old, just 50 years older ones can have really low ceilings ( 6' to 6' 6"..or sometimes even lower ), or much higher 10' or 12' ..I put those sizes in imperial so as to make it easier for a majority USA readership to visualise..our entrance doors are low enough I have to duck, but wider than would be normal for their height..I think the carpenter used neither inches, nor metric, looks like he just guessed ( or used his thumbs )..and his apprentice used the apprentice's thumbs, which were not the same ) as the entrance doors are the same heights, but different widths. I have to replace two parquet floors, the boards no longer exist in the original sizes...And to make matters worse when building, cinder blocks were a standard 20cm high, until 3 years ago, when they were silently resized to 19.5cm high, but still sold as the old dimensions, makes for a real WTF moment when you are halfway through working on a long run wall when the change happened.

Back to rulers..I have one steel 1 metre ruler, which when flipped over, is in inches on the other side..and all my tailors measuring tapes have inches one side and metric the other, not planned that way, just happened.My linux machines have "on screen rulers" which have imperial, metric, px, ems ..the windows machines have similar.That is really useful.

I'd go with "holes", any visualisation of subatomics and energy that works, works..even flipping the spin on a hole, or flowing holes, works for me :)..

There are a other ways of thinking of that kind of stuff, but "holes" works :) plus I had a friend, Patrick Woodroffe ( a brother illustrator, sadly dead now ) who wrote and illustrated a story ( along with a large amount of his other wonderful works ) about "The Adventures of Tinker The Hole-Eating Duck"..

Thanks for reminding me of Pat :)

Edited September 13, 2019 by mikesc

[fredk]

The speed of light is equal to the time a traffic light turns green and when the guy behind you blares his horn at you

Mike; here for by length wood is sold in 'metric foot' or meter. The metric foot = 300mm. By volume its sold in the cubic yard, cubic meter or cubic 'metric yard' which is a cubic yard plus about 10%

An easy way to convert US leather ounces to metric millimeter is to multiply the oz by 4 and put in the decimal point in front of the last digit, eg 5oz x 4 = 20, put the point in and you get 2.0mm,  9oz x 4 = 36 = 3.6mm. You are in fact multiplying by 0.4

Converting from and to metric & imperial and back again can lead to serious problems. Thats what happened to one of the Space Telescopes. One group in the US built one part using US Imperial, the group in Europe used metric and both 'rounded' some of the digits in the size conversions thus when the telescope was assembled in space the parts fitted but the optics were ever so slightly 'out'. They had to do an in-space adjustment repair.

Edited September 13, 2019 by fredk

[RockyAussie]

6 hours ago, mikesc said:

Tangential, but very important :)..Do you buy draught beer in pints or litres ( or half litres ) in Australia ?..Thinking about the size of your Croc beer holder stuff ( yes, I forgot what you call them ; ) ..

Since its important and all that - normally 6 packs and sometimes slabs (cartons) and sometimes kegs. The common stubby is 375ml but a little research showed me the following - Aussie population at present about 25 million.

How much beer do Aussies drink?

There were approximately 186 million litres of pure alcohol available for consumption in Australia in 2016-17. This comprised approximately 73 million litres of beer, 71 million litres of wine, 24 million litres of spirits, 11 million litres of RTDs, and 6 million litres of cider.

Oh and we call them stubby coolers and the yanks call em koozie's .

BTW - some of the shiela's whoops.... I mean ladies, here reckon they like blokes (Men) with 6 packs. I reckon why a 6 pac when you can have a whole keg instead?

[Constabulary]

The Guesstimeter is always right - not matter if thickness or length or even volume (cubic guesstimeter)

[noobleather]

Hahhaha loving this thread!!! Ahhhh where to start after drinking a few mililitres/fluid ounces of beer.  As I work on heavy mobile plant in the mining industry,re 250ton trucks (or is that 250tonne) every socket I use is either in metric or imperial.,sometimes there are slight differences in the exact feel of the socket on the nut due to the slight differences between the two. Start leather working and the thickness of leather isn't measured in either but in an imperial weight scale.i need to buy some calipers that show these weights,where can I buy them?

Looking at how many ml or fluid ounces left in my beer glass and laughing.

I guess it's what you get used to.

However metric is easier to add up if you are dumb or drunk,I'm both lol.

Respect to your measuring system.

[mikesc]

Tons to tonnes depends on which ton..US tons are "short" UK ( and I think Aussie tons ) are "long"
USA ton = 0.907 tonnes
UK ton = 0.98421 tonnes
https://www.convertunits.com/from/tons/to/metric+tonnes ( requires javascript ..USA short tons )
https://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/long-tons-to-metric-tons.htm ( no scripting required UK long tons )

ps..If anyone is going to be converting metric..this site has apps.

https://www.metric-conversions.org/

"Looking at how many ml or fluid ounces left in my beer glass and laughing."

When it was full, was it full ( poured ) in ml or fl oz ?

At least it isn't empty..that would be sad.

[chuck123wapati]

if your pattern is in metric then use  metric tape if its in inches use a tape in inches. Don't try to figure out the stuff you don't need to its irrelevant and a waste of time.

[coma44]

Each millimeter is .03937 of an inch. But as others have stated just get a metric ruler or tape and have at it

 

[SaddleBags]

This topic tickles me to tears. I was in the aerospace industry for about 35 years where the third and fourth decimal places mattered, but, hey, this is leather, not titanium.  If you need to worry about the third decimal place, you're way over-engineering.  Have you ever hear the phrase, "measure it with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, and cut it with an axe"?  2.54 cm per inch and put it to bed!

[TonyRV2]

Obviously the OP understands both systems as everyone should. Its an easy matter to measure directly in both systems given the tools. This is not rocket surgery.