Should we go to the metric system?

[Gordon Harner]

Construction workers on state highway projects are still struggling with their states' failed attempts to go metric. When the designers dimensioned their work whether imperial or metric, when converted, the results were rounded. After two or three roundings, after switching back and forth between metric and imperial, nothing fit. I saw this with New York state projects several times. Used to drive the engineers nuts!

[Jon Grider]

Most of us have already learned to live with two different measuring systems, why make one of them obsolete and the other the official system? Depending on the customers blueprint, I work in fractions or metrics at my job. No big deal to use either or both systems imo.
Should we switch to the Euro or drive on the left side of the road too because much of the rest of the world does? Naaah...."When in Rome,yada yada....". Differences keep the world a bit more interesting.

[Phil Thien]

Maybe we should try to talk the rest of the world in coming back to imperial!

I have read posts from woodworkers overseas that prefer to work in inches. They used metric their entire lives and prefer fractions.

[John Coloccia]

Just one thing to add. There's no reason in the world why you have to stick to fractions when using SAE. Seriously. You could switch to an intelligent sytem overnight by dropping fractions and adopting milliinches, centiinches, kiloinchs, etc. Or use yards if you wish. Machinists have been doing this forever. One thou is a milliinch. Then nothing at all would have to change. I've been doing this in my shop for some time now and boy does it solve a lot of headaches.

That would be a great first step. Get away from those stupid fractions for starters!

[John Coloccia]

Maybe we should try to talk the rest of the world in coming back to imperial!

I have read posts from woodworkers overseas that prefer to work in inches. They used metric their entire lives and prefer fractions.

ROFL. Great timing on that.

[Jerome Hanby]

We are lord and master of the world. You can't tell anyone anything, so being lord and master is pretty over-rated. Any light that anyone ever sees will turn out to be a train heading toward them in the tunnel. Anything involving people can't be fixed, either one of the parties leaves or one of the parties dies. And I like Craftsman mechanics tools, do I need a coupon for that sale?

[Caspar Hauser]

... Besides....it's way too easy to use metrics. How many STONE do I weigh?

I don't know your tally but I'm currently weighing in at 15st 5lb at 193cm, thats 1.68 english ells or 0.3837 Perch for those of you who prefer Imperial.

[John Coloccia]

I'm 600 microchains short of a fathom tall.

[Jeff Bratt]

Should we go metric - it is United States' official measurement system, and has been for decades. We're already going - albeit after 1982 we're going slower, and with more kicking and screaming. Even a halfway decent set of tools includes both Imperial and metric sizes. Whole sectors of industry use predominantly or entirely metric measurements - chemicals, pharmaceuticals, alcoholic beverages, electronics, even a lot of the military. And the US dollar has been "metric" (decimal based) since its beginning.

Some of the objections against changing are specious - they make it sound like fractional wrenches and saws or drills will stop working - of course that is silly. And no matter what measurement system you use, many things will not end up being sized in "round" numbers anyway. Does it really matter to you whether a #8 screw measures 5/32 in or .156 in or 3.97 mm? Or if 14 gauge wire 0.0641 in or 1.628 mm in diameter? Or if 18 ga steel is .0478 in or 1.214 mm? Those customary sizes will continue on. Even with the current fractional measurement system, a complete drill set includes special sizes of drills in the smaller size ranges - designated by a letter or number where precise sizes "in between" the regular unit divisions are required.

Anyway, all this hand-wringing over measurements in woodworking has always struck me as silly. Lumber measurements are some of the most imprecise things around. How close is that 2x4 to being 5 cm x 10 cm? Or is it really really 4.5 cm x 9 cm? How thick is that plywood, really? How much difference is there between typical "1 by" lumber nominally 3/4 in thick, vs a board milled to 19 mm? (Hint - nothing noticeable.) Where precision is required - such as joinery - mostly parts just need to fit together, the tenon slips into the mortise, or the dado slides onto the tongue. It doesn't matter if they are 1/4 in or 6 mm - as long as they match. The overall sizes of projects are even more flexible - a table could be 30 in wide or 750 mm wide and no one would notice or care. Then the wood will shrink and swell and alternate between the two. Plus there is no real difference between a 1/2 in and a 12 mm roundover edge profile.

For many machine tools there's no conversion required, just toggle a switch or change a setting. Most anything electronic is already metric. For things with engraved scales, such a conversion is obviously not possible - but converting could be as easy as replacing a printed scale strip.

Mostly it's just inertia - the traditional sizes are all around in the woodshop, and it's easier to just do things like they have been done before. But there is no disputing that calculations using a decimal system are easier and less prone to errors. There are really two related things being talked about:
1) Switching the standard units from from inches (and pounds and gallons) to meters (and grams and liters)
2) Calculating using decimals instead of fractions
The second has already happened - engineering is done using decimal calculations. Woodworking is really an anachronism in this regard. And once you are measuring things in thousandths, then it hardly matters whether you're using inches or centimeters, you just need to decide what the "standard" sizes are.

Some will prefer fractions - mostly because that what they learned. And new pipe still has to connect to older pipe, new bolts may still have to fit into old threads. But hardware stores now have to stock at least some metric sizes. These change-overs happen slowly. But eventually, the old units will simply fade away. Other examples - horse races may still be dimensioned in furlongs, but the actual measuring devices used are probably metric. Track and field races used to be in yards - now meters. Still, there will come a time when things like room temperature being 22 deg, or getting 15 km/liter will sound perfectly normal (and not just to people living outside the US), maybe not now, but eventually.

[Dar Lounsbury]

I'm with Cliff, after all this time, Why does it matter at all? Who cares and what's the point?

At 64, I remember something about old dogs and new tricks. The new tricks might be better but they are still new. This dog is to old to try.

D

[Brian Ashton]

it makes to think in terms of 10 for me. my only complaint with the metric system is for the construction trade...it is difficult to replace feet and inches with millimeters and meters. a 2 x 4 becomes 50mm x 100mm.?

I actually found the opposite. Even though canada went metric in 76 or so the building industry on the west coast stayed with imperial. The only people buying metric tapes were women do it yourselfers. When I moved down under 5 years ago it was all metric and it's just as easy for the brain to work in millimetres. It's no harder to say 4800mm as it is to say 16 feet. Or a 24 x 12 sheet of ply as opposed to a 4 x 8 sheet. 50 x 100 isn't any harder than 2 x 4 is it... By the way here they haven't converted over with 2x4 except they say 4x2. But being backwards and upside down goes a long way to explaining that... The only area where I stayed imperial was when designing and drawing items for turning. For some reason my minds eye hasn't crossed over when trying to imagine proportion and dimension in metric

[Curt Harms]

Just one thing to add. There's no reason in the world why you have to stick to fractions when using SAE. Seriously. You could switch to an intelligent sytem overnight by dropping fractions and adopting milliinches, centiinches, kiloinchs, etc. Or use yards if you wish. Machinists have been doing this forever. One thou is a milliinch. Then nothing at all would have to change. I've been doing this in my shop for some time now and boy does it solve a lot of headaches.

That would be a great first step. Get away from those stupid fractions for starters!

I think at least some aeronautical engineers do just that. I have a set of homebuilt aircraft plans (somewhere) from Burt Rutan's organization. They use decimal inches. Decimal inches have advantages similar to metric--easy math while keeping inch, feet, lbs. etc. Just what we need, another "standard"

[Brian Ashton]

It's generally accepted that 50Hz was chosen because 50Hz was the first "nice" number that allowed flicker free lamps. Westinghouse chose 60Hz, for reasons only known to them, but I'm guessing that it's because it transmits more efficiently but still allows for cheap, simple induction motors to run well. By all accounts, 60Hz is just a much better choice.

So I want my higher voltage, but they can keep their metric frequency!

I for one have found that it's quite easy to see the flicker at 50hz. I was under the impression that 50hz was accepted because it fit with the concept of the metric system in that it was an easily calculable number. And 60 was found to be more efficient but discarded as a result.

[Joe Leigh]

When did we ever care what anyone else in the world thinks?
Besides, I'm not ready to give up the cubit...

[Mitchell Andrus]

Why?
Because the other children are doing it?
Why is it seeing the light instead of something else?
Why does it matter at all?
Who cares?
What's the point?

Answer these salient questions and maybe I can offer you a response.

Perhaps if manufacturers could stop making stuff for us that isn't the same as the stuff they make for the rest of the world, we'd get a price break. Double the tooling, double the inventory, double the packaging, double the errors in ordering and shipping...... Blown plastic bottle molds in oz., qts., gals. alone must cost a fortune... passed on to the consumer. Why make special sizes just for us?

A few years ago a satellite failed in orbit because a technician miss-read inches for cm.

Mechanics must buy 2 sets of tools to work on cars. Ask a cash-strapped mechanic and he'll tell you he'd rather not have spent the money on one of his sets.

If we all had to buy a PC AND a Mac because some websites are designed for one or the other but not both.... you'd be pissed.

8x10 isn't a multiple of any other picture measurement. Sizes are 3x5, 4x6, 4x8, 5x7, 8x10, 10x12, 11x14... why?

Quick, divide 11/32" into thirds. If you said 11/96 you're right. But.... find it on a tape measure. Isn't 12mm divided into 3, 4mm parts easier and less error prone?
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