Who Would EVER Measure in Thousandths?

I had a teacher (fine furniture) married to a carpenter. She got him to be more precise than is required, but said we shouldn’t worry about going beyond 32 or 64ths… what with wood movement and all, perhaps taking out the breathing room isn’t that good an idea.

That said, I did work on stair spindles in metric friday and found it easier, but I still don’t quite think that the tolerances required in precision machinery is neccessary in a coffeetable. My friends parents had a table that was either convex or concave at differing points of the year, only at equilibrium around the equinoxes.

But, if it works for you, I’m not going to tell you not to do it. You can still say half inch though… we know that 1/2, .5 and .500000 are all the same thing.

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/

WARNING: THIS RESPONSE WRITTEN WITH TONGUE IN CHEEK - DON’T BE OFFENDED.

You guys just need to know that the rest of the world, yes, the entire rest of the world just sits back and shakes their heads at this kind of discussion. Imagine anything more ridiculous than expressing the Imperial system in decimal fractions? If you start with a flawed premise, you end up with a flawed result.

No amount of flab-gab is going to change real life, Mates, but the true decimal system is known as the Metric System. It’s simple (I know – because it works for me) easy to learn and requires no mathematics other than adding and subtracting.

So, to respond to your question, ”Who Would EVER Measure in Thousandths?”; I work in .03937” = 1mm. Can you see how much easier Metric is in this simple example? LOL

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

okay, ya gotta point there!

-- The Gnarly Wood Shoppe

I have placed a Wixley digital scale on my thickness planer. When it is on for 11/64 it shows the 11/64 and the thousands.

But when I was making a cradle and I need a couple of additional pieces of cherry. I put the dial caliper on it and it stated that it was .705 Thou. I planed the wood to .705 thou and you wouldn’t know that it had been planed a week later. It was exactly the same thickness.

Yes I do use Thousands in my woodworking.

Sorry Don but I think you were the first to tell me that you had printed my Fraction of an inch, Decimal and Millimeter conversion chart. :>)

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Hi guys. I’m new.
Us guitar makers measure in thousandths all the time.

-- I've got a bandsaw in my kitchen...

Quote Karson: ”Sorry Don but I think you were the first to tell me that you had printed my Fraction of an inch, Decimal and Millimeter conversion chart.”

As I said Karson, ”No amount of flab-gab is going to change real life, Mates…” I prefer to use Metric, but I do live in the real world. Everything I purchase out of the US is Imperial, so I have to work with it, and decimal fractions are easier to use than whole fractions. LOL

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

The more I think about it Don, if a Draft would come in a liter instead of a pint, I may go metric! ;)

-- The Gnarly Wood Shoppe

Schroeder, the following is a quote from this web site. Worth a visit.

”Australians consume four times as much beer per year than any other nation. Alcohol content is high – nearly 8 percent in some cases – and it is served in three sizes:
• 10 ounces, called a “middie” in NSW or a “pot” in Queensland and Victoria.
• 15 ounces, called a “schooner.”
• In Victoria they don’t sell schooners, but do sell pints (20 oz). Some beers are in draught form (on tap) and others can be purchased only as a stubbie (bottle) or tinnie (can). (Aussies shorten a lot of words eg BBQ is a Barbie). It is called a tinnie because it used to be made from tin, but today has followed the trend in being made from aluminum. ”

(I think the ounces bit is a translation for the US market.)

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

metric is simpler
and weight is much simpler (all in grams instead of pounds and ounces)
and temperature much simpler (0 freeze / 100 boil)
but I still think in inches, and pounds, and fehrenheit
and I talk in .. hmmm what would you call this:
Weight: I would like to buy 6 slices of meat
Temperature: it’s hotter than blazes outside and yikes.. the humidity!
Length: it’s about this long (indicating length with fingers and arms)

And so, how do I measure down in the shop? hahaha oh I should let Rick answer this one for you lol…. here’s an exact quote of my measuring: “3 1/4 inches plus a little line”.

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Measuring in thousandths is like sanding 1500 grit sand paper. Great slapping together a guitar, but could be a little much doing a kitchen. I start cussing in my shop and the wood all swells .0002 thousandths from the added humidity.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Well if you all would just make it perfect, no one will ever notice.

And what’s a guy to do? The sell the tape measures in 32ths of an inch. Thats what i bought, thats what i got, thats what I use.

See what rebelling will get you? You get to make up your own measuing system

-- http://ye-olde-cabinet-shoppe.com/

I was just talkin’ about fret,bridge and nut placement. Those parts are critical.
Set up too. String hieght at the nut ect. You could probably just breath on a piece of wood and get it to move a thou or 2.

-- I've got a bandsaw in my kitchen...

Hey Corndog,
Ever scallop your frets?

-- http://ye-olde-cabinet-shoppe.com/

No never!!!Scalloping fret boards was a horribly bad joke from the ‘80’s.
I’ve seen some so-called “luthiers” scallop the board down to the truss rod.
IMHO it serves no purpose. Some will argue better access for bending stgings, forces a lighter touch…BUNK I say. That old guitar you scalloped 20 years ago may have been worth more today if you had left it alone. Non- invasive modifications are fine[ pick-up swaps, new tuners ect] but messing with the board…..naw.

...but that’s just me.

-- I've got a bandsaw in my kitchen...

I did a carving of my wifes profile once. I never measure anything while carving, but a couple of thousandths of an inch on a small carving can make the difference on a persons face. If you remove to much you can’t put it back, so it looks like someone else. I’ll have to show this on a project posting.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

For the last four years I have been spending my summers in Beautiful Downtown Russia. Anytime I want to confuse my friends over there, I just hand them my American tape measure and let them try to figure out our screwed up American measureing system. Thats always good for a few hours of laughs. They are ahead of us in a few ways.

Paka

-- Make Dust

Everything we buy nowadays, comes from Metric countries, maybe that could be why they don’t want to buy our stuff. It doesn’t fit into their Metric world.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

In college they figured us cabinet makers needed to learn metrics. So they went out and found the worst teacher (PHD) I ever had. I do well in math and she had me all kitty wompass. The other poor students where just pulling their hair out. We had these two page answers to problems like how to convert .05 meters to 5 centimeters. She would yell at the kids. It was crazy. I looked forward to metrics now it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I think I suffer some PTSD from the experience. We should have changed to metrics 50 years ago.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Quote Dick: ”Everything we buy nowadays, comes from Metric countries, maybe that could be why they don’t want to buy our stuff. It doesn’t fit into their Metric world.”

Yes. You know the problems a US mechanic has with a European car – reverse that for the entire rest of the world. When a US made car drives into an Aussie shop the owner is shown the way out.

Quote dennis mitchell: ”In college they figured us cabinet makers needed to learn metrics. So they went out and found the worst teacher (PHD) I ever had.”

Good college – bad teacher. If you can’t teach someone how to divide or multiply by ten you are not a teacher.

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

I’m confused. You guys are all talkin’ metric….
I thought this discussion was about thousandths of an INCH. As far as I know, that’s imperial measurment not metric.

-- I've got a bandsaw in my kitchen...

Hey, Corndog, it’s called hijacking! LOL

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

LOL!!! Fair enough!!! I’m REALLY guilty of that on my local music board.
“Thread de-railed!!!”

-- I've got a bandsaw in my kitchen...

The USA was going to switch to Metric quite a few years ago, I don’t remember what year. That must been Hijacked also.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

Actually, Dick, it was Thomas Jefferson, in 1790, who proposed a decimal system even before the Metric System was formalized.

If you would like to read a long and unfortunately unproductive history of the US metric considerations, read this.

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

So when our teachers told us that we’d be learning metric soon, so lets get ready for it… they’re just repeating what their teachers (and thier teachers before them) said?

Looking back on the birth of the nation, I’m surprised that with all the British things we gave up in declaring our independence, that we share a common system of measure.

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/

geez, now you guys have me doing it to even on my own thread – Back in the days when I worked for a lumber mill, we had to convert all the empirical measurements to metric for all government orders – we never changed the actual size of the lumber – just how we just bid and recorded the tally using the metric system. I still haven’t figured out that one! Ahhh….but I digress, ...carry on ;)

-- The Gnarly Wood Shoppe

Dick:

We switched to metric. When was the last time you bought a 1/2 Gal bottle of Coke. I notice we are now getting Metric Ice Cream. They do that to give you a smaller package for the same price.

The Milk industry is still Gal. Except for Ice Cream

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

You are all right, metric is simplier. But, I just don’t have a “feel” for it.

I use a digital caliper, and when I started this, it greatly improved my work. It doesn’t take as long as trying to figure out whether I am going to read on “this” side, or “that” side of the tape measure mark, and is a lot more accurate. What I really need is a caliper that runs out about 8 feet in length!

I do what Karson described in planing boards every day, works great, although I don’t have the measuring instrument on the machine, so I have to run a board, and take a measurement by hand, adjust, run a board, take a measurement, etc.

I couldn’t read the dial caliper correctly every time, so I switched to digital and use a calculator and a printed spreadsheet with fractions and decimal points laid out so I can convert them back and forth.

Switching to metric would be great and much more efficient, but it just doesn’t feel right yet for me. I have considered it seriously, but I seem to always go back to what feels right. Habits are hard to break for sure.

I would like to see that rifle if your friend will let you post a photo in a blog or something.

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Marc, remember, typing didn’t feel right to you, but I bet you don’t give it a second thought now.

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

So this one’s kinda for Don, and is meant to be similarly tongue-in-cheek…

I’m a USAnian, but most of my tools have adjustments in metric (German engineering). Succumbing to the inevitable, I went out the other day searching for a good fine-grained metric ruler, and found that the finest gradations on the things in my local hardware store were in millimeters.

Not too surprising, I don’t really have any woodworking shops locally, most of these places cater to builders working with wet fir who think that a sixteenth is overkill, but that got me to thinking: A millimeter is nowhere near accurate enough. Half a millimeter is getting to the right range, but a quarter millimeter is almost too much, as now we’re down under a hundredth of an inch, a resolution that, with some good filtering, is almost good enough to print photographs at.

Whereas a 64th of an inch is just about a perfect small graduation for the naked eye.

Sure, I can pull out the old vernier calipers and get a hundredth of a mm, and I’m starting to do that more often, but the big failure with metric is that by pulling arbitrary numbers out of the air rather than starting from scales which evolved to mean something to real human beings, they aren’t really all that usable on human scales. And by using base 10, rather than something logical like base 2 (ie: 1/2, 1/4, etc), the system not only makes its leaps too big, but is ill suited for the computer age.

I’ll adopt the metric system because that’s what the world is going to, but given the issues with computerization of base 10 systems, it seems like the metric system is really a dated last-century scheme.

Whereas the imperial system is one for the ages.

Or, as others have said, why should we give up something God gave the English for something invented by a Frenchman?

Although most of this is probably just that I’m a computer geek first and foremost, base 2 is my first numbering system and base 10 feels like a grade school affectation.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

It looks like we’ve waisted a lifetime trying to convert to metric and where did it get us? Right here, still talking about whether or not it is a better system. I think that metric would be easier because it does away with figuring the fractions, but I haven’t been able to convert. The best I’ve been able to do is to remember that a 14mm socket=9/16”; 13mm=1/2” or there about and 11mm=7/16”. I must agree with, Dan, a 64th of an inch is just about a perfect small graduation for the naked eye.

-- Jesus is Lord!

in case anyone doesn’t get the Woodworker’s Journal Ezine, (current issue February 2007), here is a quote from Rob Johnstone, the editor:

In recent weeks, there have been various reports of oversized rodents poking their beady-eyed heads out of their respective holes in the ground with the goal of predicting the end of winter. While I am generally in favor of traditions, this one seems a bit silly to me. Especially when there is a much more accurate means of determining the depth of winter and the likely onset of spring. I am, of course, speaking of the woodshop winter metric system (WWMS for short). Note to reader: this should not be confused with “The Metric” system that for some reason strikes irrational fear into every fraction-fond American woodworker.

how fitting that not only he is speaking of spring (as in Frank’s latest blog) but also of the debate we are currently having regarding the metric system!!

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

I just found myself having to add a 3% catalyst to the my varnish so I convert everything to liters. Find the 3%. Then convert everything back to gallons and teaspoons. I don’t see what the problem is. Cups, gallons, pints, quarts, teaspoons, tablespoons. What is 3% of 2/3 of a cup expressed in teaspoons?(to the nearest 1000th)

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Dennis:

if you use 3.003% catalyst does that make the varnish brittle or stay sticky on your wood.

Karson

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

I think this thread is getting a little old, but here’s the most comprehensive converter of all types of measurements I’ve ever seen. To get the conversion factor you require, just type ‘1’ into the measure you want to convert. Or, type the measurement you know into the table to learn how it converts to the measurement you want.

-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/

One time I had a job where we worked in Millionths, that’s so small we had to use light to measure it.

-- Billp