I've said it on this platform before: I will build furniture in inches until my hands can't hold a chisel anymore. The inch system arose around the needs of carpentry and woodworking, it works in base 12, which is outright superior to base 10, especially when you divide by 3 and 4 more often than by 5.
Also, the closest tape measure I have to hand is my 5m metric tape. I build things in metric, just...not furniture.
I'm a carpenter as well, and I hear what you're saying, but also my coworkers and I were just talking yesterday about how much better metric is 😅 Every base-12 advantage is weakened by the fact that I'm constantly expected to do fractions. Everything in metric is a whole number and it's so hot. Love it when I get an actual number to build something to, instead of a math problem.
If you've ever ordered lumber from a Canadian company, you know how much easier it is to calculate and order in metric units vs. board-feet. I feel bad for their sales reps who have to deal with us Yankeestanis.
Also, all the really nice chisels and hand tools from Japan and Europe are already in metric.
Wow, base 12, I never thought of thas! You halve it, quarter it, and third it, and still end up with clean integers.
Yeah; you'll often find boards in America milled to 3/4" or 1 1/2". Those are 1/16th or 1/8th of a foot. A lot of boards used in furniture are 3/4" thick. Half of 3/4 is 3/8, a third of 3/4 is 1/4. It solves the problems we need to solve, and the metric woodworkers start sounding how teaspoon/cup/quart cooks do.
A dozenal metric system would work as well as the decimal metric system, as long as everything else was base-12:
| in base 12 | in base 10 |
|---|---|
| 1m'm = 10⁻³m = 0.001m | 1m'm = 12⁻³m = 1/1728m |
| 1c'm = 10⁻²m = 0.01m | 1c'm = 12⁻²m = 1/144m |
| 1m = 1m | 1m = 1m |
| 1k'm = 10³m = 1000m | 1k'm = 12³m = 1728m |
Since we're at this might as well say the day has 10₁₂k's = 20736₁₀s. Each k's is exactly two of our current hours, and each "new second" is roughly ~~two~~ four of our current seconds. Enough of this Sumerian mixed base already!
What do you do when a piece you're cutting isnt exactly a foot, say, 11 or 13 inches? I know nothing about woodworking, but I'm assuming there isnt a unified standard to make everything match to the nearest whole foot, so then this whole base 12 thing goes out the window, or am I missing something here?
Basically there is a conflict going on amongst the woodworkers of the world between those who think clearer in decimals, and those who think clearer in fractions. The fraction folks will tend to prefer standard units, the decimal thinkers will tend to prefer metric.
What's interesting to me is: you only ever hear Americans complaining about metric, but you never hear woodworkers from Europe or Japan talk about the advantages of standard units... while the Europeans and Japanese are also pumping out generally much higher-quality woodworking than most folks in the USA are. You can probably tell which I prefer lol
My take is, if the standard units were really that much better, I think Japanese and French folks would be using them, because their cultures care a looot more about fine woodworking than the USA's culture does.
I've setup a software that generate quotes, sales invoice and production order for a windows and door company. The sales person enter the dimensions and option of the window and it automatically calculate the price, the exact amount material, deduct it from the inventory and generate the cutting and assembly instruction.
They were all working with fractional inches. I've started setting up the system using inches and it was a NIGHTMARE ! I quickly decided to convert everything on metric in the back end and to do all the calculations on that and I reconvert it in inches at the end.
Now most of the workers are using metric because it just make more sense.
one thing i enjoy way more than i should is use units that are technically correct, but no one uses them like ever.
like megagrams instead of metric tonnes.
or 1 dekameter instead of 10 meters.
I only use metric when it's in forms nobody else uses or recognizes at a glance because I need to be difficult. Decimeter is perfect for like, height of a person, for example. Why do they use CM?
Why do they use CM?
Precision. "17dm" can be anything between 16.5dm or 17.5dm.
You could of course say "I'm 17.5dm tall", but at this point "I'm 175cm tall" is shorter (no dot).
That said I've seen plenty people measuring height in metres and then centimetres. Usually something like "I'm one [metre] and 75 [centimetres] tall".
decimeters is perfectly fine. basically all volume calculations boil down to dm³ as 1 dm³ = 1L
I measure battery capacity and electricity consumption in J/kJ/MJ, as intended. None of that kWh bullshit.
It also makes for fun comparison with energy value of foods.
Energy is energy, after all.
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im a fan of giving energy in: kg • m² ÷ s²
What, you still multiply by an arbitrary constant? I remember back before I switched to: kg • c²
And yet the cowards refuse to use megagrams. If SI prefixes are so great use them consistently rather than stealing other unit names and giving them another definition.
Also metric byte sizes deserve the fires of hell. Powers of 2 or get out.
Ah yes, I need a hard drive containing 4 times 2 to the power of 40 bytes
We don't use mega grams because kilo is the SI unit. And there's no such thing as metric byte. That's the sales department finding out that 104 MB is a larger number than 100 MiB.
In SI units a megagram would be equal to 1000 kilograms, because that's how SI unit prefixes work. Except we call it a tonne instead, which I believe is what the original commenter is referencing.
Thank you for this pedantry, I will now remove the word "tonne" from my vocabulary and insist I have only ever heard of megagrams. Bless you
As a Canadian, I'm deeply frustrated that we are taught the metric system but everything related to construction uses the feet/inch system, because USA.
It's more than that
Heights are almost expressed in feet and inches when it comes to people, and oven temperatures in Farenheight
But then outdoor temps are in Celsius, and measurements are often in CM / M oh and boy temp is Farenheight too cause of course lol
Yep. You can add to that the weight of people and other random things expressed in lb, while we are taught kg in school.
At least the US temperature scale is safe from ridicule, as Lord Fahrenheit was German/Polish.
Edit: /s, obviously.
The one thing metric screws up is file size.
A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes or 1,000,000 kilobytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes.
A gibibyte is 1024 mebibyte or 1,048,576 kibibyte or 1,073,741,824 bytes, because it needs to go by increments of a power of 2.
This would be fine except gigabyte also means gibibyte. So if a file claims to be N GBs, I don't know if it actually means metric GBs or GiBs.
That is not exactly metric 's fault though. It's whoever made the decision to portray stuff as such in operating systems
Imperial thinking people most likely
I got a question about hard drive sizes on a math test 15 years ago. Was super frustrating, since I didn't know wether or not the person who wrote the test, knew the difference.
I remember discussing with a huge group of European students what imperial had become mainly used for in UK and Ireland. It's for height and pizza size. I was in a group with many girls so us guys stopped short of mentioning about dick size being one of the few things imperial is only used for in UK and Ireland.
Whats funny is the oil and gas industry has orders of magnitude worse units. So much so, I would say the imperial system is scared of it.
I love that I'm seeing him in the wild now. One of my favourite creators, no doubts about it.
We all know it's a much better system. Reagan killed our attempt at switching. No one has tried since.
Personally, I use metric for 3D printing, and I use imperial for wood working. Until standardized material sizes change, it doesn't make sense to use metric for wood working. That change needs to come from the top, from government regulation.
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