stewartingram Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 (edited) When I was going through Tech College (remember those?) I was taught in Imperial. One thing still stands out - threads! (And I worked in electronics....). We had different threads for different purpose; eg Pipe threads for pipes, BA threads for small machine work, etc etc. There was a bit of an uproar I remember when we went metric, as it was stated that that the BA threads were very suited to small scale engineering, and the replacement metric threads were not as finely suited for that purpose, not capable of holding things as tight. I strongly believe that metrication is done for changes sake, though parts may have merit; it is always worth rembering that historically things were done a certain way for a purpose! Stewart Edited April 17, 2019 by stewartingram 5 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porkscratching Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 And of course the above system lead the world in proper engineering for a very long time.... 2 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickham Green Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 15 hours ago, SHMD said: 22150mm? Easy - 22 metres and 6 inches! ............ plus or minus the width of me thumb. 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Compound2632 Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 6 minutes ago, Wickham Green said: ............ plus or minus the width of me thumb. Your thumb is 2.4 mm wide? 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porkscratching Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 I admit I've used ancient Egyptian 'cubits' as a unit of measurement on bits of 4x2 etc.... 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TheQ Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 Well I'm also using cubits aka a breeze block length, that is lengths of 18 inches to build a garage at the moment, Oh what joy tomorrow... foundations... 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMS2968 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 1 hour ago, Compound2632 said: Your thumb is 2.4 mm wide? That's about two-thirds of an eighth of an inch! 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickham Green Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 26 minutes ago, LMS2968 said: That's about two-thirds of an eighth of an inch! .... give or take a gnat's whisker. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porkscratching Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 'Gnat's cock' is the technical term... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 15 minutes ago, Porkscratching said: 'Gnat's cock' is the technical term... But how many of them are there in a tad. Jamie 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Steven B Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 On 17/04/2019 at 08:48, Porkscratching said: Sorry but I think and work in imperial, the trouble with metric is you soon end up with crazy unwieldy numbers, its a bit like a quid equals 85597.4 lira or something, a daft example but you see what I mean. Equally daft is the imperial side of my ruler which has various inches marked out in 1/10th, 1/12th, 1/16th and 1/32nd inch. Neither system is perfect... 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Reorte Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 (edited) 15 minutes ago, Steven B said: Equally daft is the imperial side of my ruler which has various inches marked out in 1/10th, 1/12th, 1/16th and 1/32nd inch. Neither system is perfect... Any of them can be potentially useful. 10ths for decimals, 12ths because of the number of easy fractions of it and 16ths and 32nds for when it's convenient to keep halving sizes. Edited April 18, 2019 by Reorte 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porkscratching Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 1 hour ago, jamie92208 said: But how many of them are there in a tad. Jamie As many as you can do in 'two ticks'..... 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Dread Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 Drive on the left or on the right? I have been lucky there, driving on the right instead of the left was only a problem when I came home, in that case Hull. Driving in mph or kph was more of a problem as my first trip abroad was from Hull to the south of France in a Morris Minor. My 1961 model only had a speedo in mph. I used the method of taking the number on a roadside notice and if it was 50 kph, I halved that number and added a little, 30! I drove at about 28 mph to be on the safe side. The speedo below has spent a good many years hanging on my workshop wall as it is more than life expired. As to Malta when we asked our driver taking us from the airport to our hotel which side of the road was used there, he told us most drivers favoured driving in the shade. 6 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TheQ Posted April 18, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 18, 2019 Opps at least it was the barriers not a train... https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/norwich-cromer-trains-suspended-crash-at-level-crossing-1-6004347 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium melmerby Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 On 17/04/2019 at 18:29, stewartingram said: We had different threads for different purpose; eg Pipe threads for pipes, Stewart Which are a minefield just by themselves. Based on the inside diameter of the nominal steel tube, which of course didn't have a standardised wall thickness! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Compound2632 Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 BSP parallel and tapered, according to application. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porkscratching Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 Plus the application of hemp 'string' and a good dollop of Boss White... 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium corneliuslundie Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 (edited) I am surprised no-one mentioned numbered drills. Another arbitrary set of dimensions neither exactly imperial nor exactly metric as far as I can see. Re that Norfolk accident, is the driver taking NW to court for lack of duty of care for putting a level crossing in the road? Jonathan Edited April 19, 2019 by corneliuslundie Typo corrected 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Reorte Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 When I was in France someone was complaining about having to use these presumably Imperial metric A series paper sizes, presumably assuming that they were because the lengths were an odd number of mm. It's actually based on A0 having an area of 1 square metre and the area halving but the aspect ratio remaining constant every time it's folded in half. Quite a clever system IMO. 1 4 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium corneliuslundie Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 And we can blame the whole thing, other than paper sizes i suppose, on Napoleon. Jonathan 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 19, 2019 8 minutes ago, Reorte said: When I was in France someone was complaining about having to use these presumably Imperial metric A series paper sizes, presumably assuming that they were because the lengths were an odd number of mm. It's actually based on A0 having an area of 1 square metre and the area halving but the aspect ratio remaining constant every time it's folded in half. Quite a clever system IMO. Bring back foolscap. All is forgiven. At 13" x 8", common 4mm track templates fit on there just great: https://www.octopus-office.co.uk/foolscap-legal-paper/ Martin. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobby Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 Wots 4mm?! 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Compound2632 Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 52 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said: And we can blame the whole thing, other than paper sizes i suppose, on Napoleon. The metric system really got underway as a project of the Académie des sciences in 1790, building on proposals that had been rumbling away for he preceding century. At that point Napoleon Bonaparte was a junior artillery officer. It wasn't until his key role in driving the British out of Toulon in 1793 that his career really got underway, and it wasn't until 1799 that he was the effective ruler of France, by which time the platinum metre des archives and kilogramme des archives had been made. However, it was under Napoleon that the metric system became legal, though he later revoked that law in favour of a mixed system. The metric system was re-imposed in the time of the citizen-king Louis Phillipe. If you want to believe in the superiority of British technology, it's worth knowing that the present International Prototype Kilogram was made by Johnson, Matthey & Co. of Hatton Garden in the 1880s - the firm is still in the business of providing copies - although it is shortly (20 May this year) to be replaced by a definition of the kilogram in terms of fundamental constants of nature, a change made possible through the work of British scientist Bryan Kibble. 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium melmerby Posted April 19, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 19, 2019 50 minutes ago, martin_wynne said: Bring back foolscap. All is forgiven. At 13" x 8", common 4mm track templates fit on there just great: https://www.octopus-office.co.uk/foolscap-legal-paper/ Martin. Which Foolscap, Which Legal? Even these could vary. e.g. Foolscap can be 13.5" x 17", legal can be 8.5" x 14", hardly a "standard"! 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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