I must be OLD! I HATE the Metric System!!

[Clarence Martinn]

Well, it's either I am getting OLD !! , or being stuck in the House because of the Coronavirus shutdown !! Went through the latest woodworking catalogs , and took a look at some nice Wood Chisels. I am used to the standard 1/4. 1/2, 1/8, 3/4 and 1 INCH !! Wood chisels.. WELL...... The set I looked at was in METRIC !!! Oh, it was nice looking alright. But, when I compared the Metric sizes to STANDARD INCH sizes, some were under sized, some were over sized. WHY !!! can't they make Metric sized Chisels that are equal in size to STANDARD size Wood Chisels ????

Off my Soap Box now !!

[mike stenson]

Welcome to being the only country that still uses imperial. If you want imperial, it's gonna have to be US made.

[Tyler Bancroft]

Welcome to being the only country that still uses imperial. If you want imperial, it's gonna have to be US made.

Not quite - most of the Lee Valley Veritas tools are still in imperial. But good luck finding anything out of Europe that's not metric that's less than a few decades old.

[mike stenson]

Not quite - most of the Lee Valley Veritas tools are still in imperial. But good luck finding anything out of Europe that's not metric that's less than a few decades old.

True, I suspect Rob considers the US to be a major enough market to warrant doubling the tooling..

[Tyler Bancroft]

True, I suspect Rob considers the US to be a major enough market to warrant doubling the tooling..

I can't speak for professional cabinetmakers, but I'm pretty sure the Canadian construction industry still tends to use imperial. Canada's a bit mixed-up on this. Kilometers for distance and km/h for speed, but feet and inches for height and shorter measurements. Most people give you their weight in pounds, but no one uses ounces. Pints at the pub, but litres at the grocery store and in the kitchen. Fortunately, we're totally metric for science purposes, otherwise I'd go insane.

[mike stenson]

Fortunately, we're totally metric for science purposes, otherwise I'd go insane.

So is the US. However, the only countries that officially use imperial are the US, Liberia and Myanmar.

I grew up with metric, it's easy. In any case, I try not to measure.

[Mike Soaper]

I wonder if when Norm said measure twice, cut once he really wanted folks to measure in metric and imperial before cutting?

[ken hatch]

The big advantage of going metric is it will cut your measuring mistakes to almost nothing. I went metric about ten years ago and I can't remember the last time I made a measuring mistake.

I have both Imperial and metric tools in my shop, truth is it makes no never mind which is used other than a 8mm chisel matches up with a 5/16 mortise chisel and no one that I know of makes a 5/16 bench chisel.

ken

[mike stenson]

The big advantage of going metric is it will cut your measuring mistakes to almost nothing. I went metric about ten years ago and I can't remember the last time I made a measuring mistake.

I have both Imperial and metric tools in my shop, truth is it makes no never mind which is used other than a 8mm chisel matches up with a 5/16 mortise chisel and no one that I know of makes a 5/16 bench chisel.

ken

If I *AM* measuring, I try to use metric. The last couple projects that required it had to be imperial.. calling out measurements does no good if the other person has a different scale tape

Well, that and ... while I can tell you how many of what dart I need to double out right now on.. fractional math (especially division) is painful for me.

[Ben Ellenberger]

When I use chisels, if I’m doing something big I grab a big chisel, if I’m doing something small I use a small chisel. I don’t think I’ve ever actually measured my chisels to see whether or not they are exactly their nominal width. Nothing I’ve done has ever depended on a chisel being an exact size.

[roger wiegand]

I have no idea whether my chisels are metric or imperial, and I really don't care one way or the other. Likewise whether my plane shavings are thousandths of an inch thick or fractions of a millimeter (I'm guessing they are both!). I'm trying to think of an application in the shop where it might matter and am coming up empty-- today might have been an example, I needed to drill a hole and fit a plunger to it. I had some dowel labeled 1/2" and a 1/2" drill-- easy, right? Of course the dowel was neither round not any discernible even size in any measurement system, nor the same diameter over any 6" length I could find. So I drilled a hole with a drill that was about the size I wanted and went to the lathe and turned a plunger that fit my hole. It seems most everything is like that; if some dimension is constrained by your tooling you fit the other parts to it.

[Patty Hann]

The big advantage of going metric is it will cut your measuring mistakes to almost nothing. I went metric about ten years ago and I can't remember the last time I made a measuring mistake.

I have both Imperial and metric tools in my shop, truth is it makes no never mind which is used other than a 8mm chisel matches up with a 5/16 mortise chisel and no one that I know of makes a 5/16 bench chisel. ken

I've used both the imperial and metric systems for over 30 years in the aerospace industry. I worked in a calibration lab.
Linear, physical, electronic and optical measurement tools were sometimes metric, sometimes imperial, sometimes both.
I can switch from one system to the other in my sleep.

So, Ken, why do you say using the metric system cuts your measuring mistakes to almost zero?
Not arguing with you at all...I just don't understand why that would be so, because I sure would like to cut my measuring mistakes to almost nothing.

[Jim Koepke]

The big advantage of going metric is it will cut your measuring mistakes to almost nothing.

Dyslexia is an equal opportunity cause of measuring mistakes no matter which system is used.

Minimizing numerical measurements and using a story stick has greatly reduced my mistakes.

jtk

[Curt Harms]

I grew up with metric, it's easy. In any case, I try not to measure.

Growing up with it is key. Once we learn something and practice it for a while, unlearning it ain't easy. I imagine living in a country that is metric only would help to become 'bilingual' re measures.

[mike stenson]

Growing up with it is key. Once we learn something and practice it for a while, unlearning it ain't easy. I imagine living in a country that is metric only would help to become 'bilingual' re measures.

I'll point out growing up knowing metric, then learning 'imperial' is the same as someone growing up in the US learning metric. It's really not terribly difficult, easier than another language, it does take commitment to learning it..