Imperial or Metric Measurements: Which is Best?

The metric system was agreed upon by many countries in 1875 and the US was one of the founding members and officially metric since then. In more modern times it is called the SI system and used by all scientists and hopefully engineers as well. As for imperial system, if you are used to drink beer in the UK or Australia you certainly will feel cheated when you order a pint in the US, as measures are different in different parts of the empire. So yeah if you measure length in feet then it really depends on the shoe size.

I once worked in a lab and everything was in metric of course. It would have been ridiculous to use ounces and pints. It was milliliters, grams and liters. Nobody uses imperial when it really matters... And then there was the guy who was doing a course correction on a Venus lander probe and gave the instructions in metric when the thing had been programed in Imperial units (miles, feet, etc.) and the thing took a left turn and headed off into space never to be seen or heard from again. Price tag: $180 million dollars. Oops. His bosses were not happy with him. He felt very, very bad. So sometimes this stuff matters.

Bill1 said:

When does it matter in building a ukulele?

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Well, when luthiers try to communicate and they are using different units. For instance on my top thickness I like decimal Imperial as in 0.080 inch thickness or 80 thousands of an inch (also known as just 80). Europeans like their thickness measurements in millimeters which always sounds foreign to me. That would be 2.03 mm. When I eyeball my tops I see 80 and not 2mm. However when I look at my nuts (which I look at a lot), I communicate in metric as in 35 mm not in 1 3/8. It all leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion.

"I'm imagining a conversation between the inventors of the Imperial System of Measurement:

-Let's make this distance, the width of my big toe be an "inch" and we can measure things with it.
-Great idea! Then for bigger distances we can put twelve of those together.
-Sure. Let's call it a "foot".
-Sounds like a plan, and for even longer distances we could put three foots together and call it a yard.
-Good, but let's call 'em "feet" instead of "foots".
-OK. What about really long distances?
-Well, we could put 5283 feet together and call it a "mile".
-That sounds too complicated. Let's round it off to 5280 feet.
-Good idea. That'd make it 1760 yards.
-Cool. Now what about liquid measure?"



while you are mocking a system from the past you might stop and remember that the imperial system of measurement was crucial to the development of most everything that we take for granted today

Dibblet said:

Yup. But not modern ones.

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I've got 2 Myfords. An ML7 dating from 1949 and an ML8 wood turning lathe from the 60s.

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Nice Job Dibbs....Is that Maple or some other local wood..My Lathes are 1036 Drummond/Myford M type and a 1945 South bend 13... I turn out soprano necks with em.

Bill1 said:

When does it matter in building a ukulele?

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I can’t speak for Ukes but when I can then I do like to make things. Where it’s possible I prefer to use Imperial measurements because they have more meaning to me, but as and where necessary I happily enough use metric instead. In the 1920’s Ukes were built using Imperial measurements and personally I see no significant reasons not to copy that example. Ken Timms builds his replica Martins and when I see his comments he almost always talks in Imperial units.

Mike $ said:

I like Imperial because the basic measurement is base 12, if they went further with that it would be perfect. Divide inches into 12ths instead of 16ths, a mile should be divisible by 12, something like 12x12x12 feet, a mile is close to 12x12x12x3ft. Metric has a good idea in that everything is based off of the same number, 10 for every unit of measure, but they went with base 10 which is inferior to base 12 obviously because of the available divisors. Now only if our counting was base 12 as well, then we would be rolling down easy street. I blame the French for this blunder.

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If they made clocks and time Metric ...then where would we be ??? Hmmm 10 day week

Being bi-measurement literate is dead useful. Learning common measurements fir bith units is even more useful.

Timbuck said:

If they made clocks and time Metric ...then where would we be ??? Hmmm 10 day week

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The reason so much of our math is based on 10 is that we have 10 fingers (and 10 toes too). If we had 12 fingers, then we would use base 12.

Timbuck said:

Nice Job Dibbs....Is that Maple or some other local wood..My Lathes are 1036 Drummond/Myford M type and a 1945 South bend 13... I turn out soprano necks with em.

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It's boxwood. It was used almost exclusively for for early clarinets

Pete-

Whitworth... ah, yes. I miss my '67 Bonneville and Trophy. 3 sets of wrenches... Aaargh!

However, my 2005 America is much more comfortable to ride.

Today I did a modification for a bloke, on an optical laser unit that fits on a tripod i had to turn a theaded part for it on the lathe 5/8" Whitworth 11 TPI thread..Im told that almost all camera mounting threads are Whitworth even Japanese and China ones..So Mr Whitworth is far from being obsolete.

Timbuck said:

Im told that almost all camera mounting threads are Whitworth even Japanese and China ones..So Mr Whitworth is far from being obsolete.

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That is absolutely correct. And here is another piece of Whitworth trivia that you can use at your next cocktail party"

Fixings for garden gates traditionally used Whitworth carriage bolts, and these are still the standard supplied in UK and Australia.

Well I never. I had to learn thread forms at one point but have forgotten them all. I cut an acme thread for a vice at college and that was it - metric for ever after. And that coarse camera mounting spec is super useful for it's 'quick' thread!

This is the story! "how it came about as I was told" ld:...In Ye Olde England, they decided it would be a good idea to have a world recognised measuring system like the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs had in the past..So they went to the King of England and asked if they could use a measurment the length of his foot to start with, and he generously gave them the boot. They took this boot and got a well known "Cobbler to the Royal family" named "Jacob Inchcliffe" to removed the sole so they could accuratly measure it, and whilst he was removing the sole and being of a nervous disposition, he accidently walloped his thumb with his hammer and while nursing away the pain he discovered that the distance between the end of his throbbing thumb and his first knuckle, divided exactly 12 times into the size of the Kings foot..Hence the the Imperial "Foot" and "Inch-cliffe" came into being (later dropping off the "cliffe") just leaving the "inch". Then the ancient mathamaticians and Boffins decided that more precise measurment was required for various projects going on at the time, so they took the "inch" and divided it by 2 calling it an "Half inch" then dividing that by 2 calling it the "Quarter inch" then they divided it again by 2... (drum roll).. and because the Kings name at the time was "Henry" they called it "the 8th".:smileybounce:

Jerryc41 said:

I agree. It is ridiculous. From what I've read, the reasons are largely financial. It would cost a lot to convert (although other countries have been able to pay the bill), and it would cost businesses money. Our government seems to exist to keep businesses happy.

I work a lot with tools - wrenches and sockets. I have to spend twice as much for them because I must buy both metric and imperial. I once took the bumper off a Buick, and there were equal numbers of metric and imperial-sized bolts. That makes sense?

When woodworking, it's often easier to use metric measuring because there are all those little mm lines evenly spaced. I have tapes with both measuring systems on them. If the United States was totally imperial, that would be fine, but it's thoroughly mixed.

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I would like to use only metric system, becouse we mainly use it in Finland and I have learn it before.
if something is 175cm or 5 mm tall, I know its size right away and I don

I use only metric. So much easier and more logical.