Depends what kind of work you do, mechanics work in metric only, construction is in Imperial…
Comment on everything actually important is already metric
RGB3x3@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yeah, but you still measure work tools in 5/8, 7/32, and 13/64 or whatever the fuck dumbass measurements.
I say this as an American that hates the way tools are measured here.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
skulblaka@startrek.website 3 months ago
Mechanics work in metric mostly. You still come across some imperial sizes occasionally. Though recently that’s been getting standardized a lot better.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Recently?
Metric has been standard in cars for decades…
Kanda@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Then there’s planes, and trains and also ships. Ships can have parts and systems from god knows when
skulblaka@startrek.website 3 months ago
I mean, that might be true, but I work on a lot of shit that’s right around 20 years old. It’s mostly metric. But I keep a set of standard sockets around that I’ve had to pull out once or twice. Sometimes it’s been because of swollen bolts but sometimes I’m pretty damn sure that’s a 5/16.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
I specifically prefer woodworking in fractional inches. I’ve had this argument on Lemmy before and it basically goes:
“But inches bad! Metric good! Fractions bad! Powers of ten good!”
“I mean yeah okay but I nearly never have to divide by ten in the wood shop, I do have to divide by two or three or four, and since we mill stock to finished dimensions that are usually 3/2*x inches, most commonly 3/4” or 3/2" it’s trivial to do. Cutting mortise one third the board’s width in 3/4" stock ends up being exactly 1/4" wide. Easy. The metric world usually mills boards to 19mm, which is pretty close to 3/4" so it’s suitable for the same applications. Show me the line on a metric tape measure that indicates one third of 19mm."
“But Americans use inches so it must be dumb and bad!”
I use metric for quite a lot of things, I learned chemistry and physics in metric in school, I vastly prefer doing mechanical and engineering things in metric. I learned carpentry (structure building) in inches but I could cope with metric there, I learned how to fly in mostly US customary units (distances in nautical miles, speeds in nautical miles per hour aka knots, altitude and runway lengths in feet, pressures in PSI, temperature in °C) I could cope with different units there. I’m not giving up inches in the furniture shop though, because working in fractions works to well.
But yeah the faster we can erase fractional inch wrenches from the world the better. “What’s one size louder than 3/4?” “Ah shit 6/8…12/16, plus 1…13/16.”
bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Except there’s an easy way to mark thirds: if you have a, let’s say, 27 cm wide board you take the measuring by skewing a little the tape and measuring 30 cm. You mark 10 cm and 20 cm and there you have it: a third of the wide. You don’t even need the precise measure. If you have something with proportional marks you just use it and you get a third no matter the width. It’s like a center finder but with thirds (or fourths or…)
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
That will likely work for the length or width of boards, but what about thickness? Mark out a mortise and tenon on a 19mm thick board with that technique and tell me how it goes.
This is the kind of shit I’m talking about. You see these kinds of “Nuh uh, it’s not a problem, you just learn all these hacky workarounds” excuses out of the inch-ounce crowd, where you “just have different measuring cups for that” or “our butter packaging has tablespoon markings on it” but in the wood shop it’s the other way around because the physical tasks are inherently easier to express as fractions rather than decimals, so I’m the one saying “I just measure it with my tape measure or combo square or ruler and it’s right.” and the metric crowd keep going “Nuh uh, it’s not a problem, you just learn all these hacky workarounds.”
bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Or you can do a division and that’s it.