this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
794 points (96.4% liked)
Memes
8321 readers
2277 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I specifically prefer woodworking in fractional inches. I've had this argument on Lemmy before and it basically goes:
"But inches bad! Metric good! Fractions bad! Powers of ten good!"
"I mean yeah okay but I nearly never have to divide by ten in the wood shop, I do have to divide by two or three or four, and since we mill stock to finished dimensions that are usually 3/2*x inches, most commonly 3/4" or 3/2" it's trivial to do. Cutting mortise one third the board's width in 3/4" stock ends up being exactly 1/4" wide. Easy. The metric world usually mills boards to 19mm, which is pretty close to 3/4" so it's suitable for the same applications. Show me the line on a metric tape measure that indicates one third of 19mm."
"But Americans use inches so it must be dumb and bad!"
I use metric for quite a lot of things, I learned chemistry and physics in metric in school, I vastly prefer doing mechanical and engineering things in metric. I learned carpentry (structure building) in inches but I could cope with metric there, I learned how to fly in mostly US customary units (distances in nautical miles, speeds in nautical miles per hour aka knots, altitude and runway lengths in feet, pressures in PSI, temperature in °C) I could cope with different units there. I'm not giving up inches in the furniture shop though, because working in fractions works to well.
But yeah the faster we can erase fractional inch wrenches from the world the better. "What's one size louder than 3/4?" "Ah shit 6/8...12/16, plus 1...13/16."
Except there's an easy way to mark thirds: if you have a, let's say, 27 cm wide board you take the measuring by skewing a little the tape and measuring 30 cm. You mark 10 cm and 20 cm and there you have it: a third of the wide. You don't even need the precise measure. If you have something with proportional marks you just use it and you get a third no matter the width. It's like a center finder but with thirds (or fourths or...)
That will likely work for the length or width of boards, but what about thickness? Mark out a mortise and tenon on a 19mm thick board with that technique and tell me how it goes.
This is the kind of shit I'm talking about. You see these kinds of "Nuh uh, it's not a problem, you just learn all these hacky workarounds" excuses out of the inch-ounce crowd, where you "just have different measuring cups for that" or "our butter packaging has tablespoon markings on it" but in the wood shop it's the other way around because the physical tasks are inherently easier to express as fractions rather than decimals, so I'm the one saying "I just measure it with my tape measure or combo square or ruler and it's right." and the metric crowd keep going "Nuh uh, it's not a problem, you just learn all these hacky workarounds."
Or you can do a division and that's it.
19mm / 3 = 6.3333mm. Come on over here and show me the six point three three three three millimeter line on my metric tape measure.
2" / 3 = 0.666666666 Show me that point in you tape measure 😜
And both cases can be fixed by just skewing a little the tape (19 mm -> 21 mm and 2" -> 2.1". Close to 20°)
2 inches isn't a common size for stock. 1.5 inches is though.
And you want to come show me 2.1" on my standard tape measure?
Oh, right, inches are not divided by a sane number😉
TIL 2 isn't a sane number.
TIL that is better having 2.0625" and 2.125" than having 2.1" 😜
Those numbers are inconvenient only if you insist on working in base 10.