Metric or Imperial

[tmuir]

I'm pretty much a newbie myself and still kitting out my workshop.
My personal preference is metric as that is what I was brought up with and was planning on going completely metric in my workshop but I've already hit snags with this idea.
First of all I'm finding it really hard to get material in metric sizes without paying a fortune for it over about 4mm.
Secondly to ease myself into using my lathe I'm restoring a number of old engines I've got which are of course all pre-decimal so I need imperial taps / dies and bar stock for them and also I would say about 80% of all my plans are in imperial.

I guess what I'm saying is my preference is for metric but the reality is I need to work in imperial for atleast a large part of what I do.

In the future when I scratch build I plan to make all my measurements in metric but will probably end up using imperial bar stock as its a lot cheaper.

I live in Perth Western Australia and before I started looking for material I just assumed metric would be easy to get as we changed over to metric over 40 years ago but atleast where I live metric bar stock is not readily available in small quanties for reasonable prices.

 

[Loose nut]

I got this link off of the HSM form, they are also talking about this topic, it has an interesting point of view.

http://briontoss.com/education/archive/miscjuly00.htm

 

[IanN]

Hi,

I'm still trying to work out whether the website above is intended as humour or whether the author is trying to make a genuine point.

There are so many factual errors, misleading non-truths and unsupported bias opinions in the article that it is hard to take it seriously.

I wonder what the author would make of our branch of engineering where the use of metric inch divisions (thous) are the norm when dealing with precision Imperial measurements?

Ian.

 

[tmuir]

Slightly off topic but I collect model live steam locos and my fav size is 16mm.
which is 16mm to the foot scale.
I just love that one, who was the crazy gut that came up with that. :big:

 

[CrewCab]

16mm to the foot scale.

Mmmmmmmm ............. got to say I can't quite follow the logic either ??? : ;D ............. but .... wth .......... it works

As for Metric versus Imperial, I was "dragged" up with both .... .... at school it was all Imperial, when I started work as a Draughtsman (in 1968) the drawing office worked in Imperial, but at college for the next 4 years it was Metric, consequently I had to understand both, and now I can happily work with either ........... but .......... I still think in Imperial

Dave

 

[alan2525]

16mm:ft scale is based on using O Gauge (1:43.5) Track 32mm to represent a scale 2ft gauge.

That's the problem with model railways as each scale requires it's own track to run it on. Take OO scale for example - 4mm:ft but running on 16.5mm track which is out of scale for the real 4ft 8 1/2"

I use metric, my lathe is US so calibrated in Imperial, I use a metric dial gauge to work around that. Although when I have to do any large building jobs I always use Imperial as the rule has bigger numbers and am less likely to mess up by 100mm!

As far as the Imperial system goes though, I can never work out why anyone would want to decipher fractional sizes on a drill bit, what kind of measurement is 51/64ths? Metric all the way for it's sheer simplicity!