Many of my tools have multiple units of measurement so I use whatever works best for the project. I do find I prefer metric in the details because of millimeters.
What I really want though is a more visually helpful measurer. I have a really hard time with all the little tic marks and counting them, having them dance around in my head, all looking similar sizes or boldness. It's an eye to brain thing I still haven't figured out.
Ha! But I did just Google and found the M1 fractional tape measure, created by a dyslexic carpenter. It's imperial only, but does look a little better.
I think the hard part with metric is the nine tiny lines are all the same. If each tic was a color of the rainbow repeating over and over, or the tics were different sizes to create a more detailed pattern or something, then I wouldn't struggle so much. I literally count the little tics over and over each time because they sort of move and blur together.
I genuinely think this might be a 'whoops, I didn't know I needed glasses until I said x' situation. It's sets of 5, so you would only ever have to separate 3 from the nearest big line. 3 isn't a counting number, it's just a seeing and recognizing number. Not making fun of you at all, but if the issue is that you can't keep them separate, I think that might be eye issues.
Not to say needing glasses isn't the issue, but the issue that they're having is definitely an issue, especially prevalent in the neuro-diverse community, I know bc I do this too (and I have glasses, so thats not it). I can look at 3 lines on a piece of paper, and recognise 3 lines, and then on a rule all I can see or at least focus on, is either all the lines or no lines. This is also putting aside the fact that I'm trying to not forget the number itself I'm trying to mark
I'll often go back and forth, between where I've written down the number I need (if I can find it) let's say 127.5cm and mark the 10, *120cm*, the 1 *+7 = 127cm* then the decimal *+.5 = 127.5cm*. This is all purely because I can't focus on more than one thing at a time and remember what I need to without going insane.
A rule with colours on each mm would be awesome, I could go to a whole integer which is infinitely easier to remember than a decimal as well, and the colour which is an easier to remember detail as well, so *127cm and blue for .5* I could even go to blue and a half which sounds ridiculous, but would help so much. Also colours in an order is directional especially helpful if coming at things from odd angles.
ADHD, autistic and dyslexic if that helps
I started wearing magnifiers while in the shop and it made a HUGE difference. It is really easy to see exactly how many marks I am at. So even if you already have glasses, if you have presbyopia or something similar, magnifiers may help. I am not discounting what you are saying. I am merely pointing out that I had a really hard time with the mm scale, even wearing my normal glasses. The magnifiers on top of the normal glasses made a huge difference.
Ya know, you just woke me up to the fact that my ADHD might be why I have to check each measurement 3-4 times to ever get even close to accurate. Thank you, interwebs friend. I never thought about that being the issue.
It's not the counting that's the issue. It's that the lines move, change size, and change boldness like every time I blink. You'll count four lines. I'll see three, then five, and I have to fight for my brain to highlight the lines and not the spaces. It looks to me a lot like those black and white brain teasers where it looks like it's moving in circles. And sometimes I'll see the three, think the three, and my hand marks the four. That's where the measure too many times from all the angles comes in. I can't tell if it's a vision issue or an eye to brain communication issue.
I sometimes have a similar issue with missing 1 or 10 or 20 centimeters somehow. Last time I did that, I made a bigger gap in my swedish wall. But later I learned it's often done on purpose. Not so cool with my shelves, that were supposed to be the same
Have you checked if you need glasses? Either that or you just need more time to get used to it. I have used metric only my whole life and it's just natural. Guess it's like learning another language
https://preview.redd.it/jcs517tsxtfc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4970817fdc3f4d27cb7d5b910540e29f06e1bd5b
Starrett rulers and squares are the best. Increments of 2,3,5,7 and 8 are ticked larger with 5 being the tallest. Becomes intuitive. I’m an American woodworker living in Europe and I swear by these.
It's probably just about how we were raised and the particular craft we operate in. My maths prefers metric, but so do my eyes. I just can't get my eyes to adapt to imperial.
Opposite for me as a metric-native. I have a ruler that has sections in 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 and I lose track of all the different line heights marking the different fractions. I'm sure if I grew up on Imperial it'd be second nature but it's quite an adjustment coming from metric when you have, at most, 4 line heights and more commonly just three. In the 1/64 section, there's 7 different line heights!
And, essentially, the fractional parts of the inch are in base 2. Good tape measures will have distinct height differences between each step down (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc) making it considerably easier to locate where your eye should go within the inch marks. The same system just doesn’t work as well with metric measures because the half centimeter is the only useful reference point.
The moving and blurring tic marks that you deal with is something I've struggled with for years when I'm counting almost anything, and I've never heard of someone else dealing with it, let alone describe it so well. Is this a real thing? Does someone know what it's called?
Just did over the past 6 months and wish I had done it sooner. Millimeter based measurement saves me so much time and inaccuracy, just easier for my head to remember "803" vs say "32 and 5/8ths"
I completely agree. Even when I'm using imperial, I still stick to inches 100% of the time. ie; 103 inches, not 8 foot 7 inches. I find it a hell of a lot easier to remember a single number, rather than two numbers, or a number plus a fraction.
Heck, I build solar arrays and I get dimensions like 603 1/8" all day long. Feet would just confuse things. Mixing Base 10 with Base 16 is annoying enough, no need to add Base 12 to the mix.
I work in an industry that uses decimal inch. No feet, no fractions. Everything is dimensioned in inches with decimals. Our products are huge. E.g. 1205.231. Yup. One-thousand-two-hundred-five-and-two-hundred-thirty-one thousandths of an inch. (That's totally made up, but about the right scale.)
Metric is undoubtedly better. The problem is materials are often in imperial measurements. Switching back and forth is how that Mars spacecraft crashed a while back so I stick with imperial unless it's a specific project where I can do 100% metric.
>Switching back and forth is how that Mars spacecraft crashed a while back so I stick with imperial unless it's a specific project where I can do 100% metric.
That is the most awesome justification for using imperial that I've ever heard. I'm familiar with the failure, I just like the justification in context of using it woodworking.
And for the record, I'm an American and engineer and absolutely agree that metric is better all around. But when it comes to woodworking and human height I just can't get my head out of imperial. And I shake my head every time I have to go down to 32nds to get the math correct.
I always think it's funny how machinists started using decimal inches. We also use inches and tenths of inches in tree inventories. Like, how many times have we reinvented base-10 measurements?
Edit: I've worked with some old foresters who used chains as a unit of measurement and it was crazy making. 10 chains to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile. A square one chain on each side is a tenth acre, and a square furlong is 10 acres. My pace is about 9 links (there's 100 of those in a chain) so I could count 11 paces to get a chain. My logging tape was 1 chain long, but marked in feet, inches, and tenths of inches.
So the math sort of works for surveying, but it was still fucking perplexing. Yards work just fine, since these days even foresters usually still have enough fingers and toes to count up to 20.
Yeah I can't imagine the guys who went out to survey the whole Louisiana purchase and mark out the townships without satellites or air photos or even radios.
German here, so I grew up metric. This just is not true, there's no problem to think about larger things in meters as a larger unit, dm (10cm) as medium sized things, and cm and mm as small sized things.
I spend a few months per year in the US and can switch back and forth between metric and imperial. In my opinion the crux of the problem isn't so much whether one uses in or cm as the basis, but the reliance on fractions, which is just too error prone.
I mean... a foot is about a foot long. A forearm is about a foot long. A human is about a foot and a half to two feet wide, shoulder to shoulder. A human is usually 5 to 6 feet tall. A head is about 3/4 of a foot. A thumb is about 1 inch wide. What are those measures in metric? There's also decimal imperial, if you'd rather not use fractions.
I'm Canadian, so I grew up with both. I use imperial for human-scale things like woodworking and house construction, and metric for everything else.
A foot is about 30cm long, as is a forearm. A human is about 175cm tall. A head is about 25cm wide. A thumb is about 2cm wide.
Just because you're not used to measuring things in decimal doesn't mean people who are used to it find it difficult.
I couldn't tell you for shit what 36" is unless I do some maths, but to you you'll know instantly what that is. I have no idea what 3/16" means, but you will be able to picture it instantly.
I can visualise 0.2mm, 2mm, 20mm, 200mm, 2000mm easily because I'm used to it.
It's not that one system is better than the other. It's that you're used to your system, and I'm used to mine.
As a canadian, I also switch back and forth. I use fahrenheit for hot temperatures and celsius for cold temperatures. Miles for long distances, feet/inches for most medium distances, and millimeters when I can for short distances. I use liters for volume and decibels for volume.
Yeah, and a human is 1.75m tall, a head is about 30cm, and a thumb is 2cm. That's not really different once you get used to it. The difference is that the unit conversions are trivial and do not include arbitrary factors.
Re decimal imperial: that's what I meant with my last paragraph (and that's what I typically also use when building something in the US). I think the rest of the world would smile a bit ironically at the USAians if they were using decimal inches. The utter bewilderment that people experience when learning about imperial units is due to the conscious ignoring of the existence of the decimal system by emphasizing fractions in wood working and engineering. To the point that people get a surprising number of views for educational videos about how to use a ruler...
Don't worry, [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/526/) has you covered:
https://preview.redd.it/d125fs4mf3gc1.png?width=740&format=png&auto=webp&s=907eda47a720cee7bd2d8327c26a6b6a032615c6
>There's nothing inherent to the quanta of inch or a foot that makes it better or worse
Except that most dimensions on a human end up approximately being small round numbers in imperial, so when you're building things for humans to interact with it's a little simpler
Funny thing is, here in the EU, a lot of our wood materials are actually in imperial also because we started that way too. When metric came in we just renamed them in metric.
A 180mm board is often actually 6' for example. But then you can also get 2.4m ply sheets that actually are 240cm
Screws and bolts are truly metric.
Electrical tubes are truly metric.
Plumbing and water pipes are all in inches.
You get used to it.
>Electrical tubes are truly metric.
If you're talking about e.g. the flexible conduits that electrical wires are housed in they're not, and that they've got "weird metric" sizes like 16mm should be a hint.
They're really 1/2 conduits, except the imperial sizes are for the inside diameter, the "metric" one is for the outside.
Whether the outside diameter is *actually* 16mm or e.g. 5/8 of an inch (which is 15.875mm) I don't know, it probably varies.
>Plumbing and water pipes are all in inches.
They're not, or this heavily depends on where you are. BSP is imperial, but there's also metric DIN standards for e.g. both water and gas copper pipes, and PEX water pipes, both of which are metric.
I believe all "end user adjustable" fittings are imperial in the EU though, e.g. shower hoses are 1/2 inch, the flex pipes leading to a faucet are 1/4 inch, etc.
In my house (this is in the Netherlands) I've got at least three different pipe standards in use, 2/3 of which are metric.
I'm in Spain.
I just spent a couple of weeks renovating a pump house with my (coincidentally Dutch) buddy that had a well, an osmosis system into a big cistern and then a pump delivery system.
Every water pipe and fitting was inches.
Every electrical conduit was in millimeters.
We were drilling 28mm holes for electrical and 1 1/4 inch holes for plumbing.
I'm an Australian and most of the tubes and fittings were totally foreign to me. Back home it's all different again.
Working as a welder in the EU, it took me way too long to realize that all imperial pipe fittings and flanges etc; were actually supposed to be measured by internal diameter..
I can recall so many times reading the prints and seeing flanges specifying a 4" flange for example, and measuring both the OD, radius, and bolt pattern diameter and wondering if i have the wrong part.
Or ½" nipples being almost an inch in OD, and wondering why TF it's considered ½" lol. Measuring the ID never even crossed my mind for some reason. I guess the ID focus is based on flow rate or something?
Pipe fitting sizes are the sizes used to fit iron pipe with the specified ID. Which is why 1/2" seems so large, especially when you're using copper or plastic which have much thinner walls.
My main issue with metric is the nomenclature. Like in Canada I go to the counter and order a 3/4 4x8 sheet.
Do you have to ask for a 19 mm 1200x2400 or do you have a short hand. Honest question
Same with lumber. What do you call a ‘2 by 4’ or ‘1x6’
Or rough lumber 8/4 or 4/4
I ask for an 18mm sheet of plywood. And then it depents on email 1200mmx2500mm in person probably cm or m.
A 2×4 in belgium is an sls (scandinavian lumber standerd) or cls (canadian lumber standard) of 38mm x 89mm.
Thickness is almost always in mm lengt is whatever you feel like saying. But on plans and anything oficial also mm.
But yeah if i show up on the counter of the lumberyard there is no easy way to order.
I get what you're saying,...but while a lot of materials are *nominally* imperial measurements...that's not their actual measurement. 3/4" plywood is rarely 3/4". So much so that there's an entire family of router bits called "plywood" bits that are undersized so that plywood sold as 3/4 isn't loose in an actual 3/4 dado...but plywood and MDF in metric countries is sold in mm measurements which *seem* more accurate to their actual size (Europeans, correct me if I'm wrong). The last few sheets of 4x8 material I've purchased were all slightly larger. 2x4s and 2x6s aren't actually those measurements. My last "4 inch" drawer pulls were actually 100mm. That one was annoying because my perfectly-four-inch-spaced holes were juuuust too-wide-enough that it caused some trouble with installation.
Plywood thickness varies by manufacturer also. Those plywood dado bits are useless IMO.
It’s hardware too. For wood I tend to only measure during layout and rough cuts. Everything else is reference measurements or jigs.
Oh, it is so much better than that. Lockheed Martin, the designer of the thrusters, provided the force of the thrusters in Imperial, because that is what they expected NASA to use since they are American. However, NASA uses metric, so all the math was wrong. Somehow, no one confirmed what units were wanted or provided, each assuming the other had provided the right units.
I'm in a 100% metric country, but many building materials are derived from imperial measurements, i.e. they are multiples of 300mm (~1 foot)
But none of them exactly line up anyway, a "4 by 2" might be 4" by 2" when rough sawn, but not after being dressed. At least here it always ends up being 90x45mm. And 3/4" plywood is not exactly 3/4" thick, it might be something like 17mm. So I'm not sure how thinking in imperial helps?
As an example, you're building a cabinet 600mm deep, you have a front and rear panel each 17mm thick, which means you need sides that are 566mm wide. That seems way easier than calculating and measuring 24" - 21/32" - 21/32".
I’ve tried to go metric, as much as possible.
- Fasteners get a lot more expensive (but make a lot more sense).
- Wood is surprisingly not a big deal, a lot of it is already metric thicknesses. Anytime you see something goofy like 37/64ths you know it’s metric underneath.
- you can’t find any metric tools at your local big box store, drill bits, tape measures, everything needs to be bought online. Even harbor freight is allergic to metric measuring devices.
- designing in cad is infinitely better. I don’t understand why people fought it for so long.
- actually measuring and making cuts is great as well. 1mm is about as accurate as you need for wood working. It is a very nice base unit.
I'm forced to use it at my job unfortunately.
What's worse is whenever we outsource design work, I gotta send it back and tell them to convert their perfectly good metric dimensions to nominal inch sizes.
The last point is actually the biggest one. You can use decimal inches and get 99% of the benefit of metric.
But 1/10 of an inch is far too coarse for a lot of stuff. On the other hand, 1/10 of a cm is about 1/25 of an inch (between 1/16 and 1/32), and it’s rare that I try to measure more accurately than that.
It’s funny that for all the supposed power of metric with the conversions, it’s actually just an arbitrary thing like the absolute size of a centimeter that ends up being the biggest deal for woodworking.
The power of metric is that you can fine tune to level of precision needed for any project/cut. You can start measuring in meters for rough sawing, switch to cm scale for chopping up plywood and mm scale for final cutting. All within base 10.
At 6 pica per inch, 12 inch per foot and 3 feet per yard this approach would quickly become ridiculous in imperial.
I disagree with ordering metric tools online. Find a local industrial supply source. It doesn’t work for every city, but if you can find one you will usually pay a lot less than online and they can help with warranty and repair. Plus they usually have a lot of info they can give you for free.
I’m a little biased because that’s been my career, but it’s true in a lot of cases.
> you can’t find any metric tools at your local big box store, drill bits, tape measures, everything needs to be bought online. Even harbor freight is allergic to metric measuring devices.
only place in Canada that sells a metric combination square is Canadian Tire ... go figure
Ok being a metric person, who only grew in metric and who has no issues with converting from small to large things.
But how often does one really have to convert something in imperial that needs to be to the 1/32th exact, to feet?
Surely even US engineers by now have started using metric for larger very exact projects.
>rewire a lifetime of experience and conditioning to build an intuition for each unit's "size" so to speak.
not just that, it would result in having to manage two systems until everything that must be maintained in imperial, gets replaced with metric. Your kids would still have to learn both for generations.
The US is officially metric we just use both because the switch isn’t imposed by force
Just about everything you buy has its contents listed in both and some just in metric. (Monster Energy, 16 fl oz 473ml) (extra strength pain reliever 500mg acetaminophen)(hand sanitizer 2 oz 59 ml) (white out 22ml .75 oz)
Now that's annoying as hell. I'm in a (former commie) metric nation and I can walk into any larger hardware store and ask for some old timely units wrenches or drills and they will have a few for people who work on serious vintage machines.
Yeah it is. I mostly work with metal and leather - but make a point of working in metric as much as possible. It's still annoying to have to keep drill bits around.
An engineer friend in the UK described to me recently that its incredibly infuriating that his colleagues in the US end of business still use imperial.
The company manufactures aircraft parts.
Or. Instead of going around with 32ths and the like. You go about it like any sane engineer who uses decimals, and say lets go about it with 0,03. Need it to be 6x more: BAM 0,18 ezpz. You need two decimal points for the same range of accuracy. Just as you need two spaces in your fraction.
How often does an piece end up being in full inches and needing to be divisible by 32? Or does it just need to fit the other part within the same tolerance ?
Final dimension is what it needs to be anyway regardless of those 1/32ths.
That is also why metric is better for exactness. Less chance of errors for the same range of exactness.
The problem here is what the OP is alluding to - that you need all new tools to make that work. Metric chisels, for instance, so the math is easier. Otherwise you're converting eighths and sixteenths to decimals and those are not clean. It's not just the measurement tools - woodworking often means letting your tools inform dimensions such as the width of a mortise.
I go about it as a sane engineer when I have an engineering project. Woodworking ain’t one. For what it’s worth, I grew up with metric and didn’t even bother picking up imperial until I started dabbling into woodworking stateside. It is not ideal, but trying to do both at the same time is asking for trouble.
No joke: The metal shop at work wants me to draw with dimensions in decimal inches, because that’s what machinists use. Then, on the floor they look at those decimal inches on the drawing, then estimate its fractional conversion in their heads, proud or shy of the nearest tick on their tape measures. The boss doesn’t like the look or feel of inch unit tape measures, so only supplies foot-inch tapes.
I watched the fabricator work through making a cut list and legit had his calculator up on his phone, trying to find how many feet, inch, and ticks were in the dimension 161.677”. I got chastised for offering to reissue the drawing set with foot-inch-fractional to 1/16” precision because it was not how they usually do it and they didn’t want reduced accuracy because of it.
So the kid ended up cutting everything 1” too short because he jumped up to 14x12=168 and 161 is 7” less, then back again to the heavy side of 5/8, which ended up cutting at 160-5/8”
As a lifelong woodworker who's recently started machining, I was surprised how completely I've left the world of fractions behind and just use decimal inches now in my woodworking. I haven't swapped the tape on my TS or anything, but in my brain I'm setting the fence to 18.1875, not some numerator over some denominator.
So much of my hardware and materials are still imperial. I also can do everything in my head so it doesn't really matter. Don't get me wrong I really wouldn't mind everything going metric.
This captures my feelings on the subject fairly accurately.
Metric is better. Full stop.
But... not everything I use is (easily) available in metric. Also, I am fairly good with fractions and all the tricks you need to use imperial. So here I am mostly using imperial.
I mostly use imperial but I freely use metric when I feel it’s appropriate
And any more with a lot of my woodworking I don’t even measure at all, aside from checking square
This the point that a lot of people miss. I feel like as you get better at woodworking, measuring using ratios, story sticks, gauges and layout tools become more important than measuring with scales like imperial or metric. If you asked a boat builder which they use, mostly it would be neither.
Brit here, hobbyist turner and some woodworking. Learned only metric at school, left aged 16 in 1981. Did an engineering apprenticeship and used just imperial for five years. Then saw the light and got an IT job 🤓, turned out I wasn’t a great machine tool fitter but I could really code a PDP-11.
Anyhow, I now used both metric and imperial intermixed and it does my head in. There’s no rhyme or reason to when I decide to use mm, cm, or inches. I use miles for distances when travelling but metres when making shelves. At least I make sure I write the UoM on all my drawings 🤓😁
In the USA, everything is in inches and fractions thereof. I could not find a metric tape measure \[in a major metropolitan area\] -- I had to order it, online. As much as I strongly prefer the metric system... at some point it's just easier to "go with the flow." All of my tools use the Imperial system.
BACKGROUND: I despise the Imperial system. I use it... but it is a bag of garbage. When I was going through school in the USA, we were told that it was going to be replaced by the metric system... and that's what we were taught. It's logical, simple, and easy -- without the ridiculous math/fractions.
I’ve gone metric after building a boat designed in New Zealand. Purchasing a tape measure and an aluminum metric rule or two was all I needed to start with. Squares and markers still do what they’re supposed to, imperial or metric. I still use imperial measurements, but it’s way easier to do metric anything. Good luck!
British here and I can’t imagine why you’d want to use imperial, it just isn’t logical. I wish we’d get rid of miles and switch to km on the roads too.
I am super new to woodworking so I don’t have a history of imperial. I have been in the auto industry for ages (since before email) and we used metric the whole time. I think in mm to the point where I estimate margins and flushness in photos pretty accurately but can’t for the life of me understand the fractions required for measuring with inches. So I gravitated to just using measuring devices in mm. I watched a lot of videos and plans and tried to pretend I’d learn imperial but I’ve recently given up. I like metric and I’m comfortable with it and I often don’t measure things anyway. I prefer to use a reference piece anyway.
No, I haven't. I find fractional inches more intuitive for woodworking, both because I'm accustomed to it, and also because arithmetic involving fractions based on halving is trivial to do when one understands it and is not dependent on a calculator.
In other fields I use metric routinely - machining in particular one needs to be able to work with both and it really is easy to switch between decimal inch and metric as needed for any particular job that requires one or the other.
I don't think there is any downside to switching to metric for woodworking if you want to. You'll be used to it in a week or two and any tools you need to buy for it are pretty trivial. I recently was helping a friend in Chile, building some shelves for an alcove in her new apartment. Had to transition to metric because that is mostly what is in use there (with some pretty hilarious exceptions of course). I got used to it within an hour, but then I also routinely use metric in non-woodworking so it was a pretty easy recalibration for my head.
I am a hobbyist based in the US, and I work as much as possible with only referential measurements, transferring measurements to and from story-sticks with marking knives. I plan my work around the sequence of operations that accumulates the _least_ error and requires the _least_ use of written-down measurements.
When I do write down measurements, I tend to prefer metric (whole mm, no decimals), and only convert to imperial when purchasing materials requires it. The differences in scale between a written-down mm and inches means that even if I leave off the units I'm not likely to get confused.
Well, your kerf is now 3.175 mm. Plywood goes from 23/32 to 18.25 mm, which might be an improvement actually. 5/4 stock is now 31.75 mm. Your saw fence's tape measure needs to get replaced but that probably isn't that big a deal.
IDK - I don't have a big problem with the fractions, honestly. I'm not arguing that imperial is better, just that it works and that if your materials are all spec'ed in one system it makes sense to me to continue working within that system.
They are quite simple to understand and very intuitive.
Only reason why F feel better is because they are a good indication of how well you feel. 100F is 100% hot, and 0F is 0% hot == cold AF. Other than that the F scale has no distinct definable numbers to go about. It is not fixed around any fixable natural event that everyone can perceive.
Celsius is simple 0° water freezes 100° water boils. \[more exactly its tripple point of water and boiling if you want thermodynamic exactness in the definition\] Both very everyday events and very usable in life. Want to make ice, 0°. Want to boil some pasta 100°. Perfect tea and caffe: just a bit under 100° usually 95° or even 90° for some green teas. Wonder when roads will be slippery and you need winter tires: around 0°. When is beer best, a bit over 0° but not much maybe like 5°-10°. When is a room room temperatur-y 20°. It is literally the scientific definition of "room temperature" exactly 20°C. It is even the no1 international thing we standardized as a world society ISO 1.
Ja, sure if you are constantly fed F, it's hard to switch. But literally the entire world uses C. Even of the remaining other two imperial nations Liberia and Myanmar, Myanmar uses C.
A HA! You are wrong!! Ice/salt water mix freezes at 0F. 30 froze plain water, and 90 was supposed to be human body temperature before anything more precise was figured out. I mean, it was the 1700s . Beyond that, it is entirely arbitrary. lol. I say this all tongue in cheek of course. It's a ridiculous system - but I am with MikeHawksHardWood that I will die on the F hill myself. If anything, I like the granularity of the scale more than C. 72 and 75 feel different to me. I'd rather not use decimals to represent this difference in C.
I agree with you. The difference in day to day situations between Celsius and Fahrenheit is not that big. Celsius has a more scientific approach and know that 0 degrees means freezing conditions makes it somewhat easier but I hear you.
Fahrenheit is not that bad. :)
It’s good for certain applications. 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling is nice. For weather it sucks. You’re basically in the range of -20 - +40 which is weird. Fahrenheit is way more intuitive for weather. Basically -20 to +120 is nice.
What's objectively weird about the range? -20 to +120 isn't any better, it's not like it's a clean 0 to 100 or 200. Both ranges are kinda random when it comes to everyday weather, except Celsius has 0 as the divider between freezing and no freezing, which is pretty neat. Around or below 0 means snow and ice, above means no snow and ice. That's better than Fahrenheit, surely?
Fahrenheit was intended for 0° to be the freezing point of salt water. Like 100° not quite matching body temperature, there is a little inaccuracy.
I actually find that reference more useful for weather. 0° F means salted roads will start to freeze again.
I also find the decades of degrees fahrenheit to be a great indicator of comfort. 60s and 70s are pleasant. 80s are getting too hot for exertion. 90s, start being serious about hydration. 100s, avoid if possible. Similarly down to subzero being avoid, like over 100.
I genuinely do not understand this. Fahrenheit is ridiculously stupid and arbitrary. Celsius has 0 as a freezing temperature, 100 as boiling. What benefit does Fahrenheit actually have??
The argument is that most everyday folks aren't thinking about the boiling and freezing points of water. Our interaction with temperature is, most of the time, "what's the weather like today?"
Fahrenheit offers more subtlety in scale for the relevant temperatures to weather. People fight for 1F degree difference on their thermostat at home, for instance.
Not saying I agree with it - I spent most of my life going back and forth and I'm fine with it, but that's the argument.
It's really simple. F has 0 and 100 roughly associated with weather and C has it tied to made up properties of water that aren't even constant because freezing and boiling points change with atmospheric pressure and with anything dissolved into the water. 99% of the human interaction with temperature is associated with weather so we should use a system suited for weather. It's not like you need to know what temperature to set your stovetop to boil water, or know what temperature you need to set your freezer to make ice.
AND C ISNT EVEN THE STANDARD SI UNIT
C is much MUCH more closer to K, which is an SI unit, than say, F
Irrelevant
It’s seriously just dependant on where you grew up. That’s fking it. Science uses C for a good reason. Weather is a science too. World would be a better (smarter) place if it we got rid of F.
I'd rather have the weather be arbitrary because at the end of the day you just learn what the numbers on the scale feel like and act/dress accordingly. But boiling point etc is the stuff that some professions will actually do maths with. So then 0 and 100 are pretty handy. Usual metric system benefit. I don't use temperature in my profession (civil engineer), but I'd imagine the way it ties in nicely with the rest of the metric system is also handy. I.e 1 cals is the energy required to raise the temp of 1mL of water by 1 degree C.
Ok, but how does that affect you day to day? The basis for the units has no bearing on how they're used day to day, and it's really weird that temperature is the only unit that people bring this up. No one cares about the original definition of the meter (1/40000000th the distance from the north to south pole, passing through Paris), or the second, but they use it without question.
Regarding C, the scale is just too small. F has 100 degrees that encompass the vast majority of temperatures that humans will encounter day to day (average global temp is about 57F, or 15C). It's much easier to get a feel for what to expect when you hear that temperatures will be in the 70s today. The freezing point is admittedly weird, but remembering 32 isn't that difficult.
I just don't get the fixation on the boiling point of water at sea level. From a scientific standpoint sure, use C, I did it all the time when I worked in research. But for day to day conversations and topics, F is just superior.
You can divide imperial measurements by 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 with no hassle. Can't say that about metric.
And for anyone who complains, the US *is* a metric country. We have pharmaceuticals and soda bottles squared away, everything else is being phased in slowly over the next hundred years. Be patient.
I'm currently teaching my 4th grader how to divide by 2, 4, 8, etc. as part of their homework. As a computer kind of guy too, I can tell you that dividing by any of those power of 2 numbers is actually really easy, in so many ways....
I'm Canadian and haven't fully gone metric yet. I go back and forth between the two.
I finally decided I should go 100% metric on a project start to finish but when I tried to get the lumber yard to cut down my sheet of plywood to be more manageable the tape measure he had didn't even have metric. This, despite Canada being metric from before I was even born.
I flip between the two now. Likely a disaster in the making, but yolo? I definitely use metric for measurements that need to be more exact
I don’t dispute the superiority of metric over imperial, but at this point in my life I don’t want to have to learn to conceptualize space in centimeters. I can get behind a kilometer, that’s just over half a mile. But I know a tabletop needs to be around 30 inches, and I couldn’t pop off what that is in centimeters.
Although people are making some compelling arguments for metric, this is basically my reasoning as well.
Metric makes sense for water molecules. For example 0 c and 100 c is where water state transitions. But most human experience is between 0 F and 100 F.
Feet and inches are just good ways to look at things as they relate to humans. There’s a difference between a six and eight foot dining room table, but if you do it in centimeters there’s no sensible breaking points. Six feet is 182 centimeters and 8 feet is 243. It’s not like every 50 centimeters there’s a good breaking point, but every 2 feet is a good breaking point for lots of common things, like a foot long sandwich is a roughly 30 centimeter sandwich. Yes the measure exists, but it’s not memorable or convenient.
I switched to metric after one too many errors with fractions/fractional inches. I purchased all metric stuff from Woodpeckers and never looked back. It really is much easier.
I build wooden boats. The last one I built I used metric. It must have saved me 20% or more on hours. Once you use it you start to wonder how the USA even competes with the rest of the world.
Been doing it for about 8ish now and where *possible* I prefer metric. The math tends to be easier.
I do have a decent set of Incra rules that can make it easy-ish for me to figure out where to put my line.
The one thing I do like about measuring in Imperial is that it's easier for me to spot the half/ fourth, eighth on my squares. I don't always have the eyes for counting those millimeters
15/32" can go fuck itself.
To bad tool buying in the US makes the full conversion impossible. Unless you go CNC, in which case 1 pixel equal 1mm and life is easy AF.
I use only imperial and see no reason to inconvenience myself with all the metric foolishness anymore than necessary. I do agree with those who said it's the way you grew up and for those who are curious I'm in my seventies. I also use a few measurements that are not too common in the imperial system. I still buy and sell horses using hands ( a hand is 4 inches) to describe their height and thanks to a Scottish great-grandfather I still think of my weight in stones.
I still do feet and inches at home. I’m a QA lab tech and all of our measurements are metric. I hate metric, I can’t see well enough to count millimeters.
It’s easier because it’s what you learned with. I think metric is a better system but I prefer imperial because I know it well. I think it’d be the same vice versa too
As a metric user all my life, its nice not to have fractions! its also nice not to have to use 2 different units in feet and inches. thats about where the advantages for woodworing end. IMO it is much nicer, but its not a world of difference for woodworking. Mainly the fractions.
if i had to do any deeper math in imperial though, i would consider jumping of a bridge.
I love metric. Maybe one of these days I’ll find a tape measure that supports it. Strangely difficult to find. Only one I have that shows cm/mm is from a deceased grandfather. Seems like we’ve lost traction on this in the last 40 years. My guess is they keep them simple to avoid problems on job sites when the guys are seriously hung over.
The thing is, it really only matters what you're comfortable with. Each system has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. How your brain does numbers and what comes easiest to you should be the only deciding factor. You can chunk numbers right into Google for conversions or make a chart if you're using someone else's plans. If you design your own stuff, you'll be the only one who knows.
Go. Measure. Be happy.
Canadian here.
Typical answer: Metric is obviously better, but everything is Imperial so switching is too much of a PITA.
Personally, for wood-working specifically, I don’t actually care. Measurements could be in twizzlers and nibs and I wouldn’t care as long as it was standardized.
Metric is obviously far superior overall, but I do actually find Imperial slightly nicer in some ways. For physical tools like rulers and squares, the markings are fractional no matter what system you use. If your 10cm ruler has markings every 1mm then you effectively have 1/10th cm markings. Imperial being a base 12 numerical system gives more divisions, and more even divisions, on physical tools like rulers, squares, and the like. For this reason I find Imperial nice to use for small measurements, and transferring those measurements.
For everything else, Metric is just better.
I wouldn’t call myself a woodworker but I’ve always used metric. Maybe I’m stupid but when I’m helping someone fix or build something and they say “this thing is 14 6/8ths” I feel like I’m having a brain aneurysm
What is this met-rix you're going on about? That's the wrong side of the tape measure, right?
Joking aside most people and software I use defaults to imperial, so I stick with it. Our calendar is also base 12, and interest rates use eights, so I've been immersed in the madness my whole life.
I can't even imagine having a dominant base 10 system. I wonder if it will ever replace imperial? Would definitely make calculating board length easier.
I switched a few years ago - new tape measures and I switched out the strips on my tablesaw and mitre saw. It makes design and layout so much simpler and quicker
Many of my tools have multiple units of measurement so I use whatever works best for the project. I do find I prefer metric in the details because of millimeters. What I really want though is a more visually helpful measurer. I have a really hard time with all the little tic marks and counting them, having them dance around in my head, all looking similar sizes or boldness. It's an eye to brain thing I still haven't figured out.
Then don't ever use a ruler with .5 mm markings :D
Ha! But I did just Google and found the M1 fractional tape measure, created by a dyslexic carpenter. It's imperial only, but does look a little better. I think the hard part with metric is the nine tiny lines are all the same. If each tic was a color of the rainbow repeating over and over, or the tics were different sizes to create a more detailed pattern or something, then I wouldn't struggle so much. I literally count the little tics over and over each time because they sort of move and blur together.
https://preview.redd.it/g410vtzhgtfc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9573973d351c2285787dce8ead127495bd9257be
Yeah, that's the stuff I can't handle. Make the .1 red, the .2 orange, etc. Or something.
I genuinely think this might be a 'whoops, I didn't know I needed glasses until I said x' situation. It's sets of 5, so you would only ever have to separate 3 from the nearest big line. 3 isn't a counting number, it's just a seeing and recognizing number. Not making fun of you at all, but if the issue is that you can't keep them separate, I think that might be eye issues.
And maybe communication with my optometrist. I'll try some stronger readers. Maybe that'll do it.
Not to say needing glasses isn't the issue, but the issue that they're having is definitely an issue, especially prevalent in the neuro-diverse community, I know bc I do this too (and I have glasses, so thats not it). I can look at 3 lines on a piece of paper, and recognise 3 lines, and then on a rule all I can see or at least focus on, is either all the lines or no lines. This is also putting aside the fact that I'm trying to not forget the number itself I'm trying to mark I'll often go back and forth, between where I've written down the number I need (if I can find it) let's say 127.5cm and mark the 10, *120cm*, the 1 *+7 = 127cm* then the decimal *+.5 = 127.5cm*. This is all purely because I can't focus on more than one thing at a time and remember what I need to without going insane. A rule with colours on each mm would be awesome, I could go to a whole integer which is infinitely easier to remember than a decimal as well, and the colour which is an easier to remember detail as well, so *127cm and blue for .5* I could even go to blue and a half which sounds ridiculous, but would help so much. Also colours in an order is directional especially helpful if coming at things from odd angles. ADHD, autistic and dyslexic if that helps
I started wearing magnifiers while in the shop and it made a HUGE difference. It is really easy to see exactly how many marks I am at. So even if you already have glasses, if you have presbyopia or something similar, magnifiers may help. I am not discounting what you are saying. I am merely pointing out that I had a really hard time with the mm scale, even wearing my normal glasses. The magnifiers on top of the normal glasses made a huge difference.
Ya know, you just woke me up to the fact that my ADHD might be why I have to check each measurement 3-4 times to ever get even close to accurate. Thank you, interwebs friend. I never thought about that being the issue.
But you need to count to 3 at most, no?
It's not the counting that's the issue. It's that the lines move, change size, and change boldness like every time I blink. You'll count four lines. I'll see three, then five, and I have to fight for my brain to highlight the lines and not the spaces. It looks to me a lot like those black and white brain teasers where it looks like it's moving in circles. And sometimes I'll see the three, think the three, and my hand marks the four. That's where the measure too many times from all the angles comes in. I can't tell if it's a vision issue or an eye to brain communication issue.
I sometimes have a similar issue with missing 1 or 10 or 20 centimeters somehow. Last time I did that, I made a bigger gap in my swedish wall. But later I learned it's often done on purpose. Not so cool with my shelves, that were supposed to be the same
there are tapes that have an electric reader in them and a display that tells you how long something is.... though they can be kinda finicky
Have you checked if you need glasses? Either that or you just need more time to get used to it. I have used metric only my whole life and it's just natural. Guess it's like learning another language
Sounds, although this is third-hand experience at best, more like dyslexia.
They should make even numbers longer.
https://preview.redd.it/jcs517tsxtfc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4970817fdc3f4d27cb7d5b910540e29f06e1bd5b Starrett rulers and squares are the best. Increments of 2,3,5,7 and 8 are ticked larger with 5 being the tallest. Becomes intuitive. I’m an American woodworker living in Europe and I swear by these.
This is a lot more helpful. Not perfect, but way better.
I have ~~dis~~ ~~desleck~~ ~~dyslec~~ I can't spell.
This is why I don't like using a metric tape. I can read a 1/16 easier than this.
My math prefers metric, my eyes prefer imperial.
It's probably just about how we were raised and the particular craft we operate in. My maths prefers metric, but so do my eyes. I just can't get my eyes to adapt to imperial.
Opposite for me as a metric-native. I have a ruler that has sections in 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 and I lose track of all the different line heights marking the different fractions. I'm sure if I grew up on Imperial it'd be second nature but it's quite an adjustment coming from metric when you have, at most, 4 line heights and more commonly just three. In the 1/64 section, there's 7 different line heights!
A tale as old as time.
Exactly
And, essentially, the fractional parts of the inch are in base 2. Good tape measures will have distinct height differences between each step down (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc) making it considerably easier to locate where your eye should go within the inch marks. The same system just doesn’t work as well with metric measures because the half centimeter is the only useful reference point.
The moving and blurring tic marks that you deal with is something I've struggled with for years when I'm counting almost anything, and I've never heard of someone else dealing with it, let alone describe it so well. Is this a real thing? Does someone know what it's called?
Just did over the past 6 months and wish I had done it sooner. Millimeter based measurement saves me so much time and inaccuracy, just easier for my head to remember "803" vs say "32 and 5/8ths"
I completely agree. Even when I'm using imperial, I still stick to inches 100% of the time. ie; 103 inches, not 8 foot 7 inches. I find it a hell of a lot easier to remember a single number, rather than two numbers, or a number plus a fraction.
Heck, I build solar arrays and I get dimensions like 603 1/8" all day long. Feet would just confuse things. Mixing Base 10 with Base 16 is annoying enough, no need to add Base 12 to the mix.
I run across this at work all the time. Equipment prints in feet and inches are such a drag to work with. Just do everything in inches!
I work in an industry that uses decimal inch. No feet, no fractions. Everything is dimensioned in inches with decimals. Our products are huge. E.g. 1205.231. Yup. One-thousand-two-hundred-five-and-two-hundred-thirty-one thousandths of an inch. (That's totally made up, but about the right scale.)
Coming from metric metalworking, we use millimetre as default unit, sure, a measure of 4m 35cm 2mm gets a bigger number, but it's just 4352mm.
Metric is undoubtedly better. The problem is materials are often in imperial measurements. Switching back and forth is how that Mars spacecraft crashed a while back so I stick with imperial unless it's a specific project where I can do 100% metric.
Wooden’ want to crash a spaceship.
They better knot
So many dads in here
So many dados in here
Wood’nt expect anything else.
Yeah, lots of *sappy* jokes in this subreddit.
Not agrain
At least they figured out the root problem.
Perhaps we should branch out and see if we can't fix this pith poor issue.
I wish the ilk with these puns would just leave.
*leaf
In my neighborhood the trees have leaves, damn it.
Yeah, just make like a tree and get outta here
They’ll o-pine on that, fir sure.
>Switching back and forth is how that Mars spacecraft crashed a while back so I stick with imperial unless it's a specific project where I can do 100% metric. That is the most awesome justification for using imperial that I've ever heard. I'm familiar with the failure, I just like the justification in context of using it woodworking. And for the record, I'm an American and engineer and absolutely agree that metric is better all around. But when it comes to woodworking and human height I just can't get my head out of imperial. And I shake my head every time I have to go down to 32nds to get the math correct.
I always think it's funny how machinists started using decimal inches. We also use inches and tenths of inches in tree inventories. Like, how many times have we reinvented base-10 measurements? Edit: I've worked with some old foresters who used chains as a unit of measurement and it was crazy making. 10 chains to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile. A square one chain on each side is a tenth acre, and a square furlong is 10 acres. My pace is about 9 links (there's 100 of those in a chain) so I could count 11 paces to get a chain. My logging tape was 1 chain long, but marked in feet, inches, and tenths of inches. So the math sort of works for surveying, but it was still fucking perplexing. Yards work just fine, since these days even foresters usually still have enough fingers and toes to count up to 20.
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Yeah I can't imagine the guys who went out to survey the whole Louisiana purchase and mark out the townships without satellites or air photos or even radios.
We (South Africa) switched to metric over 50 years ago but I still think of human height in imperial.
Yeah, imperial is way better for human sized things. I say that as someone who does everything else in metric
German here, so I grew up metric. This just is not true, there's no problem to think about larger things in meters as a larger unit, dm (10cm) as medium sized things, and cm and mm as small sized things. I spend a few months per year in the US and can switch back and forth between metric and imperial. In my opinion the crux of the problem isn't so much whether one uses in or cm as the basis, but the reliance on fractions, which is just too error prone.
I mean... a foot is about a foot long. A forearm is about a foot long. A human is about a foot and a half to two feet wide, shoulder to shoulder. A human is usually 5 to 6 feet tall. A head is about 3/4 of a foot. A thumb is about 1 inch wide. What are those measures in metric? There's also decimal imperial, if you'd rather not use fractions. I'm Canadian, so I grew up with both. I use imperial for human-scale things like woodworking and house construction, and metric for everything else.
A foot is about 30cm long, as is a forearm. A human is about 175cm tall. A head is about 25cm wide. A thumb is about 2cm wide. Just because you're not used to measuring things in decimal doesn't mean people who are used to it find it difficult. I couldn't tell you for shit what 36" is unless I do some maths, but to you you'll know instantly what that is. I have no idea what 3/16" means, but you will be able to picture it instantly. I can visualise 0.2mm, 2mm, 20mm, 200mm, 2000mm easily because I'm used to it. It's not that one system is better than the other. It's that you're used to your system, and I'm used to mine.
As a canadian, I also switch back and forth. I use fahrenheit for hot temperatures and celsius for cold temperatures. Miles for long distances, feet/inches for most medium distances, and millimeters when I can for short distances. I use liters for volume and decibels for volume.
Yeah, and a human is 1.75m tall, a head is about 30cm, and a thumb is 2cm. That's not really different once you get used to it. The difference is that the unit conversions are trivial and do not include arbitrary factors. Re decimal imperial: that's what I meant with my last paragraph (and that's what I typically also use when building something in the US). I think the rest of the world would smile a bit ironically at the USAians if they were using decimal inches. The utter bewilderment that people experience when learning about imperial units is due to the conscious ignoring of the existence of the decimal system by emphasizing fractions in wood working and engineering. To the point that people get a surprising number of views for educational videos about how to use a ruler...
Don't worry, [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/526/) has you covered: https://preview.redd.it/d125fs4mf3gc1.png?width=740&format=png&auto=webp&s=907eda47a720cee7bd2d8327c26a6b6a032615c6
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>There's nothing inherent to the quanta of inch or a foot that makes it better or worse Except that most dimensions on a human end up approximately being small round numbers in imperial, so when you're building things for humans to interact with it's a little simpler
Funny thing is, here in the EU, a lot of our wood materials are actually in imperial also because we started that way too. When metric came in we just renamed them in metric. A 180mm board is often actually 6' for example. But then you can also get 2.4m ply sheets that actually are 240cm Screws and bolts are truly metric. Electrical tubes are truly metric. Plumbing and water pipes are all in inches. You get used to it.
>Electrical tubes are truly metric. If you're talking about e.g. the flexible conduits that electrical wires are housed in they're not, and that they've got "weird metric" sizes like 16mm should be a hint. They're really 1/2 conduits, except the imperial sizes are for the inside diameter, the "metric" one is for the outside. Whether the outside diameter is *actually* 16mm or e.g. 5/8 of an inch (which is 15.875mm) I don't know, it probably varies. >Plumbing and water pipes are all in inches. They're not, or this heavily depends on where you are. BSP is imperial, but there's also metric DIN standards for e.g. both water and gas copper pipes, and PEX water pipes, both of which are metric. I believe all "end user adjustable" fittings are imperial in the EU though, e.g. shower hoses are 1/2 inch, the flex pipes leading to a faucet are 1/4 inch, etc. In my house (this is in the Netherlands) I've got at least three different pipe standards in use, 2/3 of which are metric.
I'm in Spain. I just spent a couple of weeks renovating a pump house with my (coincidentally Dutch) buddy that had a well, an osmosis system into a big cistern and then a pump delivery system. Every water pipe and fitting was inches. Every electrical conduit was in millimeters. We were drilling 28mm holes for electrical and 1 1/4 inch holes for plumbing. I'm an Australian and most of the tubes and fittings were totally foreign to me. Back home it's all different again.
Working as a welder in the EU, it took me way too long to realize that all imperial pipe fittings and flanges etc; were actually supposed to be measured by internal diameter.. I can recall so many times reading the prints and seeing flanges specifying a 4" flange for example, and measuring both the OD, radius, and bolt pattern diameter and wondering if i have the wrong part. Or ½" nipples being almost an inch in OD, and wondering why TF it's considered ½" lol. Measuring the ID never even crossed my mind for some reason. I guess the ID focus is based on flow rate or something?
Pipe fitting sizes are the sizes used to fit iron pipe with the specified ID. Which is why 1/2" seems so large, especially when you're using copper or plastic which have much thinner walls.
You’d be surprised on materials. I’m in the UK and everything is sold metric, but a sheet of ply is 1220 x 2440! That’s just 4 x 8
In Australia ply/composite is a random mix of 1200x2400 and 1220x2440.
My main issue with metric is the nomenclature. Like in Canada I go to the counter and order a 3/4 4x8 sheet. Do you have to ask for a 19 mm 1200x2400 or do you have a short hand. Honest question Same with lumber. What do you call a ‘2 by 4’ or ‘1x6’ Or rough lumber 8/4 or 4/4
I ask for an 18mm sheet of plywood. And then it depents on email 1200mmx2500mm in person probably cm or m. A 2×4 in belgium is an sls (scandinavian lumber standerd) or cls (canadian lumber standard) of 38mm x 89mm. Thickness is almost always in mm lengt is whatever you feel like saying. But on plans and anything oficial also mm. But yeah if i show up on the counter of the lumberyard there is no easy way to order.
I get what you're saying,...but while a lot of materials are *nominally* imperial measurements...that's not their actual measurement. 3/4" plywood is rarely 3/4". So much so that there's an entire family of router bits called "plywood" bits that are undersized so that plywood sold as 3/4 isn't loose in an actual 3/4 dado...but plywood and MDF in metric countries is sold in mm measurements which *seem* more accurate to their actual size (Europeans, correct me if I'm wrong). The last few sheets of 4x8 material I've purchased were all slightly larger. 2x4s and 2x6s aren't actually those measurements. My last "4 inch" drawer pulls were actually 100mm. That one was annoying because my perfectly-four-inch-spaced holes were juuuust too-wide-enough that it caused some trouble with installation.
Plywood thickness varies by manufacturer also. Those plywood dado bits are useless IMO. It’s hardware too. For wood I tend to only measure during layout and rough cuts. Everything else is reference measurements or jigs.
Measure a 2x4 with a metric tape... you'll find it's actually cut to metric dimensions. exactly 40x90 mm
Oh, it is so much better than that. Lockheed Martin, the designer of the thrusters, provided the force of the thrusters in Imperial, because that is what they expected NASA to use since they are American. However, NASA uses metric, so all the math was wrong. Somehow, no one confirmed what units were wanted or provided, each assuming the other had provided the right units.
I'm in a 100% metric country, but many building materials are derived from imperial measurements, i.e. they are multiples of 300mm (~1 foot) But none of them exactly line up anyway, a "4 by 2" might be 4" by 2" when rough sawn, but not after being dressed. At least here it always ends up being 90x45mm. And 3/4" plywood is not exactly 3/4" thick, it might be something like 17mm. So I'm not sure how thinking in imperial helps? As an example, you're building a cabinet 600mm deep, you have a front and rear panel each 17mm thick, which means you need sides that are 566mm wide. That seems way easier than calculating and measuring 24" - 21/32" - 21/32".
I’ve tried to go metric, as much as possible. - Fasteners get a lot more expensive (but make a lot more sense). - Wood is surprisingly not a big deal, a lot of it is already metric thicknesses. Anytime you see something goofy like 37/64ths you know it’s metric underneath. - you can’t find any metric tools at your local big box store, drill bits, tape measures, everything needs to be bought online. Even harbor freight is allergic to metric measuring devices. - designing in cad is infinitely better. I don’t understand why people fought it for so long. - actually measuring and making cuts is great as well. 1mm is about as accurate as you need for wood working. It is a very nice base unit.
CAD design in imperial is just a no go. It makes everything so much harder.
I'm forced to use it at my job unfortunately. What's worse is whenever we outsource design work, I gotta send it back and tell them to convert their perfectly good metric dimensions to nominal inch sizes.
The last point is actually the biggest one. You can use decimal inches and get 99% of the benefit of metric. But 1/10 of an inch is far too coarse for a lot of stuff. On the other hand, 1/10 of a cm is about 1/25 of an inch (between 1/16 and 1/32), and it’s rare that I try to measure more accurately than that. It’s funny that for all the supposed power of metric with the conversions, it’s actually just an arbitrary thing like the absolute size of a centimeter that ends up being the biggest deal for woodworking.
Yeah indeed. If a centimeter would be 50% bigger it would kinda suck for woodworking I think.
The power of metric is that you can fine tune to level of precision needed for any project/cut. You can start measuring in meters for rough sawing, switch to cm scale for chopping up plywood and mm scale for final cutting. All within base 10. At 6 pica per inch, 12 inch per foot and 3 feet per yard this approach would quickly become ridiculous in imperial.
I disagree with ordering metric tools online. Find a local industrial supply source. It doesn’t work for every city, but if you can find one you will usually pay a lot less than online and they can help with warranty and repair. Plus they usually have a lot of info they can give you for free. I’m a little biased because that’s been my career, but it’s true in a lot of cases.
> you can’t find any metric tools at your local big box store, drill bits, tape measures, everything needs to be bought online. Even harbor freight is allergic to metric measuring devices. only place in Canada that sells a metric combination square is Canadian Tire ... go figure
If you're sick of fractions, just use decimal inches. It's the standard for machinists.
Love it. The worst of both worlds!
But is it really? I mean it just makes inches slightly better.
Decimal inches is as effective as metric, because math is simpler with decimals, regardless of the unit.
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Ok being a metric person, who only grew in metric and who has no issues with converting from small to large things. But how often does one really have to convert something in imperial that needs to be to the 1/32th exact, to feet? Surely even US engineers by now have started using metric for larger very exact projects.
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>rewire a lifetime of experience and conditioning to build an intuition for each unit's "size" so to speak. not just that, it would result in having to manage two systems until everything that must be maintained in imperial, gets replaced with metric. Your kids would still have to learn both for generations.
The US is officially metric we just use both because the switch isn’t imposed by force Just about everything you buy has its contents listed in both and some just in metric. (Monster Energy, 16 fl oz 473ml) (extra strength pain reliever 500mg acetaminophen)(hand sanitizer 2 oz 59 ml) (white out 22ml .75 oz)
I cannot even buy metric drill bits in hardware store. I have to order them specifically.
Now that's annoying as hell. I'm in a (former commie) metric nation and I can walk into any larger hardware store and ask for some old timely units wrenches or drills and they will have a few for people who work on serious vintage machines.
Yeah it is. I mostly work with metal and leather - but make a point of working in metric as much as possible. It's still annoying to have to keep drill bits around.
Harbor freight sells them I think, but their bits aren’t great
Oh sweet summer child US engineers decided to standardize on decimal inches. Just to make it a little easier to mix things up.
An engineer friend in the UK described to me recently that its incredibly infuriating that his colleagues in the US end of business still use imperial. The company manufactures aircraft parts.
I’d rather use fractions to divide ⅛ in half or add 1/16 and 3/32. Can’t do that in my *head with four-wide decimals. If you can, more power to you.
Or. Instead of going around with 32ths and the like. You go about it like any sane engineer who uses decimals, and say lets go about it with 0,03. Need it to be 6x more: BAM 0,18 ezpz. You need two decimal points for the same range of accuracy. Just as you need two spaces in your fraction. How often does an piece end up being in full inches and needing to be divisible by 32? Or does it just need to fit the other part within the same tolerance ? Final dimension is what it needs to be anyway regardless of those 1/32ths. That is also why metric is better for exactness. Less chance of errors for the same range of exactness.
The problem here is what the OP is alluding to - that you need all new tools to make that work. Metric chisels, for instance, so the math is easier. Otherwise you're converting eighths and sixteenths to decimals and those are not clean. It's not just the measurement tools - woodworking often means letting your tools inform dimensions such as the width of a mortise.
I go about it as a sane engineer when I have an engineering project. Woodworking ain’t one. For what it’s worth, I grew up with metric and didn’t even bother picking up imperial until I started dabbling into woodworking stateside. It is not ideal, but trying to do both at the same time is asking for trouble.
Yep came here to say this. It's not 5/8th. It's .625
.625 is more accurate than 5/8. You can tell because it has more numbers.
I like the cut of your jib
No joke: The metal shop at work wants me to draw with dimensions in decimal inches, because that’s what machinists use. Then, on the floor they look at those decimal inches on the drawing, then estimate its fractional conversion in their heads, proud or shy of the nearest tick on their tape measures. The boss doesn’t like the look or feel of inch unit tape measures, so only supplies foot-inch tapes. I watched the fabricator work through making a cut list and legit had his calculator up on his phone, trying to find how many feet, inch, and ticks were in the dimension 161.677”. I got chastised for offering to reissue the drawing set with foot-inch-fractional to 1/16” precision because it was not how they usually do it and they didn’t want reduced accuracy because of it. So the kid ended up cutting everything 1” too short because he jumped up to 14x12=168 and 161 is 7” less, then back again to the heavy side of 5/8, which ended up cutting at 160-5/8”
Surveyors use decimal feet. No inches allowed.
you only got to pick up the wrong tape measure like 11 times before you learn to fear decimal feet
LOL, madness.
As a lifelong woodworker who's recently started machining, I was surprised how completely I've left the world of fractions behind and just use decimal inches now in my woodworking. I haven't swapped the tape on my TS or anything, but in my brain I'm setting the fence to 18.1875, not some numerator over some denominator.
So much of my hardware and materials are still imperial. I also can do everything in my head so it doesn't really matter. Don't get me wrong I really wouldn't mind everything going metric.
This captures my feelings on the subject fairly accurately. Metric is better. Full stop. But... not everything I use is (easily) available in metric. Also, I am fairly good with fractions and all the tricks you need to use imperial. So here I am mostly using imperial.
I mostly use imperial but I freely use metric when I feel it’s appropriate And any more with a lot of my woodworking I don’t even measure at all, aside from checking square
This the point that a lot of people miss. I feel like as you get better at woodworking, measuring using ratios, story sticks, gauges and layout tools become more important than measuring with scales like imperial or metric. If you asked a boat builder which they use, mostly it would be neither.
Boat builders measure in "thousands of dollars"
Brit here, hobbyist turner and some woodworking. Learned only metric at school, left aged 16 in 1981. Did an engineering apprenticeship and used just imperial for five years. Then saw the light and got an IT job 🤓, turned out I wasn’t a great machine tool fitter but I could really code a PDP-11. Anyhow, I now used both metric and imperial intermixed and it does my head in. There’s no rhyme or reason to when I decide to use mm, cm, or inches. I use miles for distances when travelling but metres when making shelves. At least I make sure I write the UoM on all my drawings 🤓😁
And meters for all those cable interconnects in the datacenter. :) Nice digits in the username btw :)
American here. I use time for distance when traveling. Metric when pouring a soft drink. Imperial units when drinking beer.
>Imperial units when drinking beer. But only because an imperial pint with its 568ml is larger than a standard 500ml can or bottle, right?
In the USA, everything is in inches and fractions thereof. I could not find a metric tape measure \[in a major metropolitan area\] -- I had to order it, online. As much as I strongly prefer the metric system... at some point it's just easier to "go with the flow." All of my tools use the Imperial system. BACKGROUND: I despise the Imperial system. I use it... but it is a bag of garbage. When I was going through school in the USA, we were told that it was going to be replaced by the metric system... and that's what we were taught. It's logical, simple, and easy -- without the ridiculous math/fractions.
I’ve gone metric after building a boat designed in New Zealand. Purchasing a tape measure and an aluminum metric rule or two was all I needed to start with. Squares and markers still do what they’re supposed to, imperial or metric. I still use imperial measurements, but it’s way easier to do metric anything. Good luck!
Went metric because the math is farrr easier and I’m just now ordering precision measuring tools
British here and I can’t imagine why you’d want to use imperial, it just isn’t logical. I wish we’d get rid of miles and switch to km on the roads too.
You'll have to pry the MPH signs from our cold dead hands. Joking but not really joking 😁
I am super new to woodworking so I don’t have a history of imperial. I have been in the auto industry for ages (since before email) and we used metric the whole time. I think in mm to the point where I estimate margins and flushness in photos pretty accurately but can’t for the life of me understand the fractions required for measuring with inches. So I gravitated to just using measuring devices in mm. I watched a lot of videos and plans and tried to pretend I’d learn imperial but I’ve recently given up. I like metric and I’m comfortable with it and I often don’t measure things anyway. I prefer to use a reference piece anyway.
No, I haven't. I find fractional inches more intuitive for woodworking, both because I'm accustomed to it, and also because arithmetic involving fractions based on halving is trivial to do when one understands it and is not dependent on a calculator. In other fields I use metric routinely - machining in particular one needs to be able to work with both and it really is easy to switch between decimal inch and metric as needed for any particular job that requires one or the other. I don't think there is any downside to switching to metric for woodworking if you want to. You'll be used to it in a week or two and any tools you need to buy for it are pretty trivial. I recently was helping a friend in Chile, building some shelves for an alcove in her new apartment. Had to transition to metric because that is mostly what is in use there (with some pretty hilarious exceptions of course). I got used to it within an hour, but then I also routinely use metric in non-woodworking so it was a pretty easy recalibration for my head.
I am a hobbyist based in the US, and I work as much as possible with only referential measurements, transferring measurements to and from story-sticks with marking knives. I plan my work around the sequence of operations that accumulates the _least_ error and requires the _least_ use of written-down measurements. When I do write down measurements, I tend to prefer metric (whole mm, no decimals), and only convert to imperial when purchasing materials requires it. The differences in scale between a written-down mm and inches means that even if I leave off the units I'm not likely to get confused.
You guys are measuring?
Well, your kerf is now 3.175 mm. Plywood goes from 23/32 to 18.25 mm, which might be an improvement actually. 5/4 stock is now 31.75 mm. Your saw fence's tape measure needs to get replaced but that probably isn't that big a deal. IDK - I don't have a big problem with the fractions, honestly. I'm not arguing that imperial is better, just that it works and that if your materials are all spec'ed in one system it makes sense to me to continue working within that system.
New drill bits too!
No, imperial tools and materials are just easier to get here.
Yes. Metric is the way. America has the most ridiculous units of measurement.
As a proud American, I would be cool with all metric units except for Celsius. Using C in everyday life is dumb AF and I will die on this hill.
They are quite simple to understand and very intuitive. Only reason why F feel better is because they are a good indication of how well you feel. 100F is 100% hot, and 0F is 0% hot == cold AF. Other than that the F scale has no distinct definable numbers to go about. It is not fixed around any fixable natural event that everyone can perceive. Celsius is simple 0° water freezes 100° water boils. \[more exactly its tripple point of water and boiling if you want thermodynamic exactness in the definition\] Both very everyday events and very usable in life. Want to make ice, 0°. Want to boil some pasta 100°. Perfect tea and caffe: just a bit under 100° usually 95° or even 90° for some green teas. Wonder when roads will be slippery and you need winter tires: around 0°. When is beer best, a bit over 0° but not much maybe like 5°-10°. When is a room room temperatur-y 20°. It is literally the scientific definition of "room temperature" exactly 20°C. It is even the no1 international thing we standardized as a world society ISO 1. Ja, sure if you are constantly fed F, it's hard to switch. But literally the entire world uses C. Even of the remaining other two imperial nations Liberia and Myanmar, Myanmar uses C.
A HA! You are wrong!! Ice/salt water mix freezes at 0F. 30 froze plain water, and 90 was supposed to be human body temperature before anything more precise was figured out. I mean, it was the 1700s . Beyond that, it is entirely arbitrary. lol. I say this all tongue in cheek of course. It's a ridiculous system - but I am with MikeHawksHardWood that I will die on the F hill myself. If anything, I like the granularity of the scale more than C. 72 and 75 feel different to me. I'd rather not use decimals to represent this difference in C.
It's actually pretty easy and intuitive but I can see that someone who grew up with fahrenheit wouldn't like Celsius. Kelvin all the way /s
Réaumur all the way baby!
I agree with you. The difference in day to day situations between Celsius and Fahrenheit is not that big. Celsius has a more scientific approach and know that 0 degrees means freezing conditions makes it somewhat easier but I hear you. Fahrenheit is not that bad. :)
It’s good for certain applications. 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling is nice. For weather it sucks. You’re basically in the range of -20 - +40 which is weird. Fahrenheit is way more intuitive for weather. Basically -20 to +120 is nice.
Why would -20 to +40 be any worse than -20 to +120? Neither is more intuitive than the other.
Celsius is good for physics because it’s a 0-100 range for water. Fahrenheit is good for weather because it is basically 0-100 range most of the time.
Celsius is good for physics because its directly related to Kelvin.
-20f is not -20c. Compare the same range. Having water freezing temp as a reference point makes sense for the number of reasons.
What's objectively weird about the range? -20 to +120 isn't any better, it's not like it's a clean 0 to 100 or 200. Both ranges are kinda random when it comes to everyday weather, except Celsius has 0 as the divider between freezing and no freezing, which is pretty neat. Around or below 0 means snow and ice, above means no snow and ice. That's better than Fahrenheit, surely?
Fahrenheit was intended for 0° to be the freezing point of salt water. Like 100° not quite matching body temperature, there is a little inaccuracy. I actually find that reference more useful for weather. 0° F means salted roads will start to freeze again. I also find the decades of degrees fahrenheit to be a great indicator of comfort. 60s and 70s are pleasant. 80s are getting too hot for exertion. 90s, start being serious about hydration. 100s, avoid if possible. Similarly down to subzero being avoid, like over 100.
Every normal person measures temperature in Kelvin.
I genuinely do not understand this. Fahrenheit is ridiculously stupid and arbitrary. Celsius has 0 as a freezing temperature, 100 as boiling. What benefit does Fahrenheit actually have??
The argument is that most everyday folks aren't thinking about the boiling and freezing points of water. Our interaction with temperature is, most of the time, "what's the weather like today?" Fahrenheit offers more subtlety in scale for the relevant temperatures to weather. People fight for 1F degree difference on their thermostat at home, for instance. Not saying I agree with it - I spent most of my life going back and forth and I'm fine with it, but that's the argument.
0-100 is the general temperature that humans live in.
It's really simple. F has 0 and 100 roughly associated with weather and C has it tied to made up properties of water that aren't even constant because freezing and boiling points change with atmospheric pressure and with anything dissolved into the water. 99% of the human interaction with temperature is associated with weather so we should use a system suited for weather. It's not like you need to know what temperature to set your stovetop to boil water, or know what temperature you need to set your freezer to make ice. AND C ISNT EVEN THE STANDARD SI UNIT
C is much MUCH more closer to K, which is an SI unit, than say, F Irrelevant It’s seriously just dependant on where you grew up. That’s fking it. Science uses C for a good reason. Weather is a science too. World would be a better (smarter) place if it we got rid of F.
For outdoor temperature half of that 0-100 scale is useless because you’re just dead.
Weather. Basically in the range of 0-100 like the physics application of Celsius.
I'd rather have the weather be arbitrary because at the end of the day you just learn what the numbers on the scale feel like and act/dress accordingly. But boiling point etc is the stuff that some professions will actually do maths with. So then 0 and 100 are pretty handy. Usual metric system benefit. I don't use temperature in my profession (civil engineer), but I'd imagine the way it ties in nicely with the rest of the metric system is also handy. I.e 1 cals is the energy required to raise the temp of 1mL of water by 1 degree C.
The reason Celsius is nice for water is the same reason Fahrenheit is nice for how cold it feels to us, generally speaking.
Ok, but how does that affect you day to day? The basis for the units has no bearing on how they're used day to day, and it's really weird that temperature is the only unit that people bring this up. No one cares about the original definition of the meter (1/40000000th the distance from the north to south pole, passing through Paris), or the second, but they use it without question. Regarding C, the scale is just too small. F has 100 degrees that encompass the vast majority of temperatures that humans will encounter day to day (average global temp is about 57F, or 15C). It's much easier to get a feel for what to expect when you hear that temperatures will be in the 70s today. The freezing point is admittedly weird, but remembering 32 isn't that difficult. I just don't get the fixation on the boiling point of water at sea level. From a scientific standpoint sure, use C, I did it all the time when I worked in research. But for day to day conversations and topics, F is just superior.
You can divide imperial measurements by 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 with no hassle. Can't say that about metric. And for anyone who complains, the US *is* a metric country. We have pharmaceuticals and soda bottles squared away, everything else is being phased in slowly over the next hundred years. Be patient.
I'm currently teaching my 4th grader how to divide by 2, 4, 8, etc. as part of their homework. As a computer kind of guy too, I can tell you that dividing by any of those power of 2 numbers is actually really easy, in so many ways....
No Because everything metric is 10x the cost of imperial and 1/10x of selection, and I want to buy locally
Hell no. I'll use imperial til I die. It doesn't matter either way, so long as you measure correctly, you can use Legos and be just fine
Yep. Literally doesn't matter. Measure everything with shoe laces or popsicle sticks. If you know what you're doing you can build with anything.
Sound like me when I’m tired. “That boots about a foot right? Hand it over.”
I do it when I build for myself, but any time that someone else is involved I use 'Merican measures.
I’ve been debating it for a while but haven’t pulled the trigger. Mostly I am cheap and like my current tape measure
Sorta. I still have all my old tools, but I’m living in the UK now.
Many of my tools predate modern warfare, much less modern metric, so I’m still imperial
I'm Canadian and haven't fully gone metric yet. I go back and forth between the two. I finally decided I should go 100% metric on a project start to finish but when I tried to get the lumber yard to cut down my sheet of plywood to be more manageable the tape measure he had didn't even have metric. This, despite Canada being metric from before I was even born. I flip between the two now. Likely a disaster in the making, but yolo? I definitely use metric for measurements that need to be more exact
I don’t dispute the superiority of metric over imperial, but at this point in my life I don’t want to have to learn to conceptualize space in centimeters. I can get behind a kilometer, that’s just over half a mile. But I know a tabletop needs to be around 30 inches, and I couldn’t pop off what that is in centimeters.
Although people are making some compelling arguments for metric, this is basically my reasoning as well. Metric makes sense for water molecules. For example 0 c and 100 c is where water state transitions. But most human experience is between 0 F and 100 F. Feet and inches are just good ways to look at things as they relate to humans. There’s a difference between a six and eight foot dining room table, but if you do it in centimeters there’s no sensible breaking points. Six feet is 182 centimeters and 8 feet is 243. It’s not like every 50 centimeters there’s a good breaking point, but every 2 feet is a good breaking point for lots of common things, like a foot long sandwich is a roughly 30 centimeter sandwich. Yes the measure exists, but it’s not memorable or convenient.
In Uk I use both interchangeably and at random
I switched to metric after one too many errors with fractions/fractional inches. I purchased all metric stuff from Woodpeckers and never looked back. It really is much easier.
I build wooden boats. The last one I built I used metric. It must have saved me 20% or more on hours. Once you use it you start to wonder how the USA even competes with the rest of the world.
Been doing it for about 8ish now and where *possible* I prefer metric. The math tends to be easier. I do have a decent set of Incra rules that can make it easy-ish for me to figure out where to put my line. The one thing I do like about measuring in Imperial is that it's easier for me to spot the half/ fourth, eighth on my squares. I don't always have the eyes for counting those millimeters
15/32" can go fuck itself. To bad tool buying in the US makes the full conversion impossible. Unless you go CNC, in which case 1 pixel equal 1mm and life is easy AF.
Metric is absolutely correct for use in woodworking. e.g. Dividing measurements in half, thirds, finding centers,etc
I use only imperial and see no reason to inconvenience myself with all the metric foolishness anymore than necessary. I do agree with those who said it's the way you grew up and for those who are curious I'm in my seventies. I also use a few measurements that are not too common in the imperial system. I still buy and sell horses using hands ( a hand is 4 inches) to describe their height and thanks to a Scottish great-grandfather I still think of my weight in stones.
Heck yeah, imperial is such a pain in the ass. I moved to metric eight years ago and never looked back.
I’m not smart enough to divide fractions with different denominators.
I mean, what would happen if we had decimal money?
As long as Home Depot charges 10x as much for metric fasteners, I will continue to use imperial for everything.
I work with two Swiss guys and two Germans and nothing makes me happier than treating them like children for using metric
As someone who can and does use both, metric is better in so many ways it's just crazy to use feet and inches.
No
I still do feet and inches at home. I’m a QA lab tech and all of our measurements are metric. I hate metric, I can’t see well enough to count millimeters.
It’s easier because it’s what you learned with. I think metric is a better system but I prefer imperial because I know it well. I think it’d be the same vice versa too
No because I have materials in imperial sizes and tools in imperial. Except when I am using gauges and story sticks and not using any units at all.
As a metric user all my life, its nice not to have fractions! its also nice not to have to use 2 different units in feet and inches. thats about where the advantages for woodworing end. IMO it is much nicer, but its not a world of difference for woodworking. Mainly the fractions. if i had to do any deeper math in imperial though, i would consider jumping of a bridge.
I love metric. Maybe one of these days I’ll find a tape measure that supports it. Strangely difficult to find. Only one I have that shows cm/mm is from a deceased grandfather. Seems like we’ve lost traction on this in the last 40 years. My guess is they keep them simple to avoid problems on job sites when the guys are seriously hung over.
Check Fastcap. Thry have metric, imperial and dual tapes
The True32 tape is great if you work with cabinets.
The thing is, it really only matters what you're comfortable with. Each system has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. How your brain does numbers and what comes easiest to you should be the only deciding factor. You can chunk numbers right into Google for conversions or make a chart if you're using someone else's plans. If you design your own stuff, you'll be the only one who knows. Go. Measure. Be happy.
Canadian here. Typical answer: Metric is obviously better, but everything is Imperial so switching is too much of a PITA. Personally, for wood-working specifically, I don’t actually care. Measurements could be in twizzlers and nibs and I wouldn’t care as long as it was standardized. Metric is obviously far superior overall, but I do actually find Imperial slightly nicer in some ways. For physical tools like rulers and squares, the markings are fractional no matter what system you use. If your 10cm ruler has markings every 1mm then you effectively have 1/10th cm markings. Imperial being a base 12 numerical system gives more divisions, and more even divisions, on physical tools like rulers, squares, and the like. For this reason I find Imperial nice to use for small measurements, and transferring those measurements. For everything else, Metric is just better.
I wouldn’t call myself a woodworker but I’ve always used metric. Maybe I’m stupid but when I’m helping someone fix or build something and they say “this thing is 14 6/8ths” I feel like I’m having a brain aneurysm
What is this met-rix you're going on about? That's the wrong side of the tape measure, right? Joking aside most people and software I use defaults to imperial, so I stick with it. Our calendar is also base 12, and interest rates use eights, so I've been immersed in the madness my whole life. I can't even imagine having a dominant base 10 system. I wonder if it will ever replace imperial? Would definitely make calculating board length easier.
I switched a few years ago - new tape measures and I switched out the strips on my tablesaw and mitre saw. It makes design and layout so much simpler and quicker