3 ms·

As a woodworker, this is one of my prime reasons for still liking inches. Of course, fractional inches are kind of terrible once you get past 16ths, but, that's

As a woodworker, this is one of my prime reasons for still liking inches. Of course, fractional inches are kind of terrible once you get past 16ths, but, that's what decimal inches are for! (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.)

Jedd 8y ago
> (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.) This is what normal people do with metric / decimal. Everything's in thousands (/1000's) of a metre -- ie. millimetres, or mm. When you can no longer differentiate the notches on your rule ... you're accurate enough.
- abakker 8y ago
  Nah, you buy a finer ruler! I also find myself doing a fair amount of machining, and one of the things I have to remind myself is that I don’t need .001” accuracy in wood.
  - Jedd 8y ago
    I hear you. When I'm working with a chainsaw I'm 'accurate' to within several millimetres. Through a tablesaw or bandsaw etc I'm closer to 1-2 millimetres accuracy. It's rare I need to get to thickenesser levels of accuracy (0.5 millimetres, say) ... but I usually work with more forgiving softer timbers. A friend of mine does some seriously precise metalwork - down to 'thousands of an inch' (he's English, but has lived in AU for some decades). It's beyond my realm, though the level of accuracy transcends measurement systems -- whether it's thousands of inches, or extra zeroes after the dot for fractions of a mm -- it's a matter of tooling, or, as I say, gradations on your rule!
    - abakker 8y ago
      Yeah, consistency is really the important one. Almost none of my projects in wood are built "to spec". So, as long as the thickness is consistent between boards, the table will be flat, the joinery will match, etc. Conversely, in metal, pretty much 100% of my projects are built to a plan, since they tend to be parts of machinery/tools/jigs that need to be the reference surfaces. Oh, the money i've spent on measuring equipment. yeesh.
hprotagonist 8y ago
I once obtained a ruler that was given in decimal feet. That was a _weird_ day.
- abakker 8y ago
  I actually make and sell these, as well as rulers that are in decimal inches. They're handy for woodworkers or others that need to use multiple scales. Even weirder, I've made rulers that indicate pixels at the precise PPI density for MacBook pros, iPhones, etc, so that my graphic designer friend could hand sketch UI/UX elements to scale and see how they'd render.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  I bought a 3-pack of tape measures at Home Depot several years ago, being delighted that they were much cheaper than normal. Sure enough, first time I go to use one I discover it's in decimal feet. That, too, was a weird day. I'm in Canada, so it's not unusual for some things to be in feet/inches and some to be in meters/centimeters/etc. But my brain positively melted when it couldn't reconcile the incongruity of those tape measures.

Jedd 8y ago

> (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.) This is what normal people do with metric / decimal. Everything's in thousands (/1000's) of a metre -- ie. millimetres, or mm. When you can no longer differentiate the notches on your rule ... you're accurate enough.

abakker 8y ago
Nah, you buy a finer ruler! I also find myself doing a fair amount of machining, and one of the things I have to remind myself is that I don’t need .001” accuracy in wood.
- Jedd 8y ago
  I hear you. When I'm working with a chainsaw I'm 'accurate' to within several millimetres. Through a tablesaw or bandsaw etc I'm closer to 1-2 millimetres accuracy. It's rare I need to get to thickenesser levels of accuracy (0.5 millimetres, say) ... but I usually work with more forgiving softer timbers. A friend of mine does some seriously precise metalwork - down to 'thousands of an inch' (he's English, but has lived in AU for some decades). It's beyond my realm, though the level of accuracy transcends measurement systems -- whether it's thousands of inches, or extra zeroes after the dot for fractions of a mm -- it's a matter of tooling, or, as I say, gradations on your rule!
  - abakker 8y ago
    Yeah, consistency is really the important one. Almost none of my projects in wood are built "to spec". So, as long as the thickness is consistent between boards, the table will be flat, the joinery will match, etc. Conversely, in metal, pretty much 100% of my projects are built to a plan, since they tend to be parts of machinery/tools/jigs that need to be the reference surfaces. Oh, the money i've spent on measuring equipment. yeesh.

hprotagonist 8y ago

I once obtained a ruler that was given in decimal feet. That was a _weird_ day.

abakker 8y ago
I actually make and sell these, as well as rulers that are in decimal inches. They're handy for woodworkers or others that need to use multiple scales. Even weirder, I've made rulers that indicate pixels at the precise PPI density for MacBook pros, iPhones, etc, so that my graphic designer friend could hand sketch UI/UX elements to scale and see how they'd render.
tonyarkles 8y ago
I bought a 3-pack of tape measures at Home Depot several years ago, being delighted that they were much cheaper than normal. Sure enough, first time I go to use one I discover it's in decimal feet. That, too, was a weird day. I'm in Canada, so it's not unusual for some things to be in feet/inches and some to be in meters/centimeters/etc. But my brain positively melted when it couldn't reconcile the incongruity of those tape measures.