I also find inches easier to work with unless I’m making something with my 3d printer. Fractions are just easier when you’re making something big with looser tolerances.
Doing things in 1/16ths of an inch is easier than metric for like woodworking and such IMO. Especially since most tools and materials come in inches here. Until you get into stuff that has tighter tolerances than 1/16th of an inch. Even then you could go to .010s or .001s of an inch but I’m more used to metric at that scale and that’s what the applications I use for 3d printing default to.
No, you’re not getting it. 1/16 isn’t a function of a decimal system. It’s base 2. Primarily because you don’t really deal with 1/10th of something, but half of a half sort of stuff.
1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16…
2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4…
And base-2 functions make sense in wood working in general because of it’s imprecise nature. It’s more useful to compare things in halves. A 2x2 piece of wood is not literally 2inches x 2inches. Even in Europe you guys follow weird numbers for finished wood dimensions. It doesn’t make sense to have such precision when nothing about it is precise.
So I have to throw out all my stuff and spend $1000s on new tools?
You don’t work in 1/10ths of an inch. It’s 1/16ths and that that’s where the math ends. You don’t need to convert it to decimal. Unless you’re doing machining which you do work in .0001ths due to the tighter tolerances and I’ve already agreed you might as well use metric for that.
you’re talking about two or three different, unrelated things.
decimals vs fractions - you’re whining that 1/16 gives you more leeway, but too stupid to realise that 1/10 is less precise and is the same as 0.1
So either you’re happy with less precision - and decimals are good, or you want more precision - and decimals are still good.
Again - absolutely nothing to do with metric. You can convert 3 3/4 inches to 3.75 inches, 3 12/16ths or 3 7.5/10ths of an inch. They’re all the same thing and all imperial.
Tools. The topic is “using metric”. Once you have all metric tools, then it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to change the topic to buying new tools. Unrelated. Using a tool vs shopping like a princess for new toys. We’re talking about using tools.
but hey, while we’re on the topic of how dumb you are, let’s keep using what you say against you. You keep saying “it doesn’t have to be that accurate” well, okay then. then get a sharpie, write the approximate metric conversion on the side and get on with your life. A 5 minute job for someone who I presume can write numbers and count to ten?
I knew there were more. What you don’t get, what you keep missing, is that 1/16 is smaller than 1/10. that means your bitching about “tighter tolerances” applies more to dicking about with 1/16ths instead of 1/10s (which again, is decimals, nothing to do with metric)
If you can’t have a civil conversation without insults I’m not going to bother with you anymore. We’re talking about units of measurement, there’s no reason to be an asshole. Go fuck yourself.
1/16 of an inch is slightly smaller than a millimeter, you’d just end up using a millimeter or half again as your tolerance limit.
The big issue with imperial is all the fractions and strange conversions. On more then one occasion I’ve caught myself mixing up eighths and quarters, because my brain views them more as concepts then as numbers. Which is bigger, 11/16 or 3/4? Now, you’ll get the answer, sure, but you had to think about it and it goes against the natural intuition that larger numbers are bigger. Compare that with, which is bigger 0.6875 or 0.75 and it should be trivial to see which is easier to learn and use.
0.6875 is basically a meaningless concept to me when I try to picture it in my head and what if you need to add it to another dimension? It’s not easy to work 4 decimal places in your head. .75 only works because I automatically convert it to 3/4. Maybe it’s just something that comes with experience but I don’t have trouble with knowing what’s what. If your not sure you can always make the denominator equal and figure it that way. 3/4=12/16 for instance. Easy math to do in your head.
Sure, but your measuring system dictates what lengths you actually design things to be. You would never actually use 0.6875, but if some jerk designed something with that length, it will be easy to tell exactly how big it was. If you switched to metric, your smallest practical unit for woodworking would almost certainly be a millimeter.
The problem is everything is already built using the imperial measurements. Even if we switched all the new tools and materials over to metric we’d be stuck having to do a bunch of conversions when we’re integrating it into existing construction and we’d probably be dealing with that for the rest of our lives.
You’re already dealing with it there’s loads of stuff that’s built in metric, especially everything that’s imported. The question is if you want to continue using a system that invites mistakes in order to avoid the pain of switching. The pain will subside pretty quickly, and only come up every time you have to retrofit old construction and whatnot. As the years go on more and more things will be switched until it’s rare to see imperial. I lived in a house built in the 1800s, but we still had modern windows and insulation because those things are obviously better and we improved the building when it was convenient and necessary to do so.
What about imperial invites mistakes and what makes you think that there will be fewer mistakes after we switch to metric and now have to use both systems and do messy conversions anytime we are working with pre-existing structures? Retrofitting old construction is basically a constant state of being for me and many others. What do we gain by switching to metric?
I also find inches easier to work with unless I’m making something with my 3d printer. Fractions are just easier when you’re making something big with looser tolerances.
3 2/10 cm is easier than 3.2cm?
Doing things in 1/16ths of an inch is easier than metric for like woodworking and such IMO. Especially since most tools and materials come in inches here. Until you get into stuff that has tighter tolerances than 1/16th of an inch. Even then you could go to .010s or .001s of an inch but I’m more used to metric at that scale and that’s what the applications I use for 3d printing default to.
you don’t get it.
your tools and materials will come in metric when everything is metric.
doing things on 1/10 of an inch or 1/10 of a cm is the same as 0.1 inches or 0.1 cm.
1/16 = 0.0625
3/16 of an inch = 0.1875 inches
as in “1/16th” literally means “one divided by sixteen, so do extra math instead of just giving you the real number”
decimal doesn’t mean, nor have anything to do with metric.
No, you’re not getting it. 1/16 isn’t a function of a decimal system. It’s base 2. Primarily because you don’t really deal with 1/10th of something, but half of a half sort of stuff.
1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16…
2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4…
And base-2 functions make sense in wood working in general because of it’s imprecise nature. It’s more useful to compare things in halves. A 2x2 piece of wood is not literally 2inches x 2inches. Even in Europe you guys follow weird numbers for finished wood dimensions. It doesn’t make sense to have such precision when nothing about it is precise.
So I have to throw out all my stuff and spend $1000s on new tools?
You don’t work in 1/10ths of an inch. It’s 1/16ths and that that’s where the math ends. You don’t need to convert it to decimal. Unless you’re doing machining which you do work in .0001ths due to the tighter tolerances and I’ve already agreed you might as well use metric for that.
you’re talking about two or three different, unrelated things.
So either you’re happy with less precision - and decimals are good, or you want more precision - and decimals are still good.
Again - absolutely nothing to do with metric. You can convert 3 3/4 inches to 3.75 inches, 3 12/16ths or 3 7.5/10ths of an inch. They’re all the same thing and all imperial.
Tools. The topic is “using metric”. Once you have all metric tools, then it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to change the topic to buying new tools. Unrelated. Using a tool vs shopping like a princess for new toys. We’re talking about using tools.
but hey, while we’re on the topic of how dumb you are, let’s keep using what you say against you. You keep saying “it doesn’t have to be that accurate” well, okay then. then get a sharpie, write the approximate metric conversion on the side and get on with your life. A 5 minute job for someone who I presume can write numbers and count to ten?
I knew there were more. What you don’t get, what you keep missing, is that 1/16 is smaller than 1/10. that means your bitching about “tighter tolerances” applies more to dicking about with 1/16ths instead of 1/10s (which again, is decimals, nothing to do with metric)
If you can’t have a civil conversation without insults I’m not going to bother with you anymore. We’re talking about units of measurement, there’s no reason to be an asshole. Go fuck yourself.
yes, we are talking about units of measurement, which is why you talking about fractions is irrelevant. Thank you for agreeing with me.
jeezus chris on a cracker you’re a slow one.
1/16 of an inch is slightly smaller than a millimeter, you’d just end up using a millimeter or half again as your tolerance limit.
The big issue with imperial is all the fractions and strange conversions. On more then one occasion I’ve caught myself mixing up eighths and quarters, because my brain views them more as concepts then as numbers. Which is bigger, 11/16 or 3/4? Now, you’ll get the answer, sure, but you had to think about it and it goes against the natural intuition that larger numbers are bigger. Compare that with, which is bigger 0.6875 or 0.75 and it should be trivial to see which is easier to learn and use.
0.6875 is basically a meaningless concept to me when I try to picture it in my head and what if you need to add it to another dimension? It’s not easy to work 4 decimal places in your head. .75 only works because I automatically convert it to 3/4. Maybe it’s just something that comes with experience but I don’t have trouble with knowing what’s what. If your not sure you can always make the denominator equal and figure it that way. 3/4=12/16 for instance. Easy math to do in your head.
Sure, but your measuring system dictates what lengths you actually design things to be. You would never actually use 0.6875, but if some jerk designed something with that length, it will be easy to tell exactly how big it was. If you switched to metric, your smallest practical unit for woodworking would almost certainly be a millimeter.
The problem is everything is already built using the imperial measurements. Even if we switched all the new tools and materials over to metric we’d be stuck having to do a bunch of conversions when we’re integrating it into existing construction and we’d probably be dealing with that for the rest of our lives.
You’re already dealing with it there’s loads of stuff that’s built in metric, especially everything that’s imported. The question is if you want to continue using a system that invites mistakes in order to avoid the pain of switching. The pain will subside pretty quickly, and only come up every time you have to retrofit old construction and whatnot. As the years go on more and more things will be switched until it’s rare to see imperial. I lived in a house built in the 1800s, but we still had modern windows and insulation because those things are obviously better and we improved the building when it was convenient and necessary to do so.
What about imperial invites mistakes and what makes you think that there will be fewer mistakes after we switch to metric and now have to use both systems and do messy conversions anytime we are working with pre-existing structures? Retrofitting old construction is basically a constant state of being for me and many others. What do we gain by switching to metric?