Metric vs imperial

Now that one is guaranteed to cause some friction!

Now with that title out of the way, I would like to make a statement concerning what I find to be the case with some users of the system of measurement commonly known as the Imperial system. That is, that the guys and gals who live in the world of inches, feet and miles seem to be more likely to avoid converting anything from inches to millimetres than would the user of Metric be to do the reverse.

After that one it may be likely that the only people still reading this post may be predominantly metrically inclined, at least up to the next statement.

Metric isn’t necessarily better than imperial.

Let me elaborate on the each of the above statements.

It really shouldn’t be one versus the other, it’s much more fun discussing the traditional mortise and tenon versus loose tenons, that is if one wants to be politically correct, let’s just say Festool Domino to really get in amongst the pigeons!

Having been a consumer of plans and video training sessions of various proprietors of digital outlets I can confidently say that the large majority of these cater for the Imperially minded amongst us. I even occasionally purchase plans from a well known site that has a section for Metric plans exclusively, but happen to have none in there when you select the option! Well, it’s the intention that counts isn’t it? As a result of this lack of available plans in Metric I have become adept at converting inches to mm using anything from favourite calculators on the net, I especially like this one, to a quick conversion on the back of my metal rules to actually using an Imperial rule (the combination ones are useful) and even sometimes multiplying an inch by 25mm to get a ballpark.

Just the sheer mass of material out there that is exclusively measured in inches tells me that the market in inches is either bigger or that the Imperially inclined are less likely to convert.

Lastly, both are effective means of measurement and telling someone how long, wide or thick something should be is all that really should matter.

Now for the motivation to write this piece.

My dad is a fitter and turner by trade, he’s retired now and paints for a living. Anyway one day we were having a telephone conversation when I dared mention a thickness of something I was building from an Imperial based plan in inches. He was aghast that I would even consider stating the dimension for anything in Imperial. Of course in my case I was quite surprised by his reaction, considering that in my workshop it had become common practice to use both Metric and Imperial and to even sometimes state a dimension in inches. He also explained to me that during his training and time working in his chosen trade that it was actually illegal to use Imperial measurements or have any Imperial measuring equipment anywhere in your workplace.

Knowing our government it may likely still be illegal and I may be breaking the law as we speak!

Since then I have become one of those on-line proprietors mentioned earlier and if you are reading this you should be aware of that fact, considering that you are reading this on my site! However, what you may not know is that in our shop right next door - just press the store button or follow this link to gain access - we offer most if not all of our plans in both Metric and Imperial (still converting some at the time of writing). I would also like to mention that we do all our designs in Metric and that converting these to Imperial is a real pain in the rear, we do it though because we love you and we even went as far as making both plans for each design the same price, choosing not to pass the cost of extra labour on to our customers.

Thinking about this whole Metric vs Imperial thing also made me realise that I’ve inadvertently been using some form of Imperial measurement most of my professional life, at least from the time when I needed to keep track of distance covered in a company car or when fuel was included as a perk for business use. When filling up on gas or what we would call petrol, we needed to provide a distance travelled to the service attendant (a uniquely South African position as we do not pump our own fuel). Guess what we would call this distance, in spite of measuring it in kilometres?

Mileage!

We even call it mileage when providing our odometer reading to the service centre when having a car serviced.

Talk about irony.

But us followers of the mm may have the last laugh after all. If you have any commercially purchased plywoods on site, please measure the thickness or size of a sheet in mm, I hope you at least have access to a mm rule! You may find more often than not that the size of plywood is actually measured in Metric rather than Imperial, even in the US.

If I sound slightly biased on Metric it's because adding small fractional values makes my head hurt and I much prefer using decimals when doing so.

But those whose first love remains the inch, you may have the privilege of firing the parting shot after all. Remember those plywoods I was bragging about just a short while ago? It seems like we may be in the same boat on that one. Let’s just say that I love my Ridge Carbide dado set and that it works a treat. Thank goodness it came with shims to make Imperial sized blades cut Metric sized dados!

Well back to converting designs to Imperial it is……..

Thank goodness degrees are standard!