need help with measurements

[trojan62]

hi all,
hope someone can help.
ive only been doing woodwork for about a year and i dont think im too bad at it, but one thing i always seem to struggle with is measurements. what im talking about are things when it says measure 1/16 or 1/8, things like that of an inch, these mean nothing to me. does anyone have a help guide or sheet explaining thses sort of measurements.
soory if i seem a bit dense on this subject, but id like to learn this sort of stuff better.

cheers chris.....

 

[CHJ]

This conversion aid I did might help

 

[Racers]

Hi, Chris

All these are approximate.

1"=25mm
3/4"=18mm
1/2"=12mm
1/4=6mm
1/8=3mm
1/16=1.5mm

A rule with mm and imperal will help you to visualize the sizes.

Pete

 

[Grahamshed]

soory if i seem a bit dense on this subject, but id like to learn this sort of stuff better.

cheers chris.....

Not dense, just young.
I, on the other hand, read and measure millimeters but mentally translate into inches/eights/sixteenths

 

[Jelly]

If you know what an inch is, and you know what fractions are, you do actually know what a 1/16th of an inch is... if you find it hard to work in imperial measures however, just take a moment and convert them to SI (sorry metric), there is literally no point struggling with it.

I feel very lucky in having become conversant in both metric and imperial; I often find myself using whichever is more convenient for reasons of scale or mental arithmetic.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I wish people would convert to S.I. - and forget fr1gging centimeters!

 

[Lons]

I, on the other hand, read and measure millimeters but mentally translate into inches/eights/sixteenths

Me too...but ...

I also still convert current prices back into shillings / pence. Can't help it but it does make me go for a lie down afterwards :shock:

Bob

 

[t8hants]

Use both.......... 37"&9mm. I also agree that I wish they would stop teaching centipedes in schools and stick to meters and mil's.

G

 

[Grahamshed]

I, on the other hand, read and measure millimeters but mentally translate into inches/eights/sixteenths

Me too...but ...

I also still convert current prices back into shillings / pence. Can't help it but it does make me go for a lie down afterwards :shock:

Bob

Oh, don't get me started. Do you realise how much a 4d packet of crisps costs ?

And we never had all this bad weather before bl@@dy decimalization.

 

[Mark A]

I feel very lucky in having become conversant in both metric and imperial; I often find myself using whichever is more convenient for reasons of scale or mental arithmetic.

Despite only being taught metric for measuring and fractions for the division of apples in school I use both, but actually prefer inches.

 

[bugbear]

hi all,
hope someone can help.
ive only been doing woodwork for about a year and i dont think im too bad at it, but one thing i always seem to struggle with is measurements. what im talking about are things when it says measure 1/16 or 1/8, things like that of an inch, these mean nothing to me. does anyone have a help guide or sheet explaining thses sort of measurements.
soory if i seem a bit dense on this subject, but id like to learn this sort of stuff better.

cheers chris.....

Unless you're using old books, modern woodwork is done in mm, so I wouldn't worry about inches and fractions, or rods poles and perches.

In America, in a triumph of solving the "wrong problem", they find inches and fractions so very convenient, they have special calculator software to handle them (!!!!).

BugBear

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Unless you're using old books, modern woodwork is done in mm

Is it really ? Timber is priced by the cubic foot, and comes in nominal 1" boards. Manufactured boards are 19mm x 2440mm x 1220, or 3/4 x 8' x 4' really. Router bits are most commonly made to imperial sizes, even if they are listed with an odd metric size. Hinges the same. "Metric" woodscrews come in 25, 32, 38 mm lengths, or should I say 1", 1 1/4", 1 1/2" When I made a door last, it needed to be 80x30" and 1 3/4 thick. Even those 19mm holes in my bench are really 3/4" !

It will be a long time before inches are just a memory. I'm young enough to have been taught fully in metric at school, but my dad worked in Imperial and I picked that up too, now I use whichever is most natural/appropriate for the job.

As a computer programmer in my day job, I'm quite at ease with the power of 2 fractions 1/2, 1/4. 1/8. ...

 

[Lord Kitchener]

I wish people would convert to S.I. - and forget fr1gging centimeters!

Centimetres, created by the devil to confuse and annoy.

 

[jakethebuilder]

I saw the reference to "America solving the wrong problem" above, and couldn't resist. I must agree, at least partly. Some of us, surveyors at least, use Feet for measurement, but measurement tapes and level rods are decimalized. That is, a Foot is divided into hundredths and tenths, rather than the usual 12 inches. I makes math much easier. On a small scale, like woodworking, Metric is certainly easier than dealing with fractions, but when we start to speak of land measure, I can't visualize a kilometer the same way I can a mile. One time, a co-worker asked the boss if he could take home one of the surveyor's tape measures, because he was building a storage building, and had cut a bunch of boards to 7 feet 5 inches, when he needed them to be seven and a half feet. He was acccustomed to thinking in thenths of a foot, rather than inches. Of course, over here, all the lumber products are measured by inches and fractions, so it makes sense for me to use inches and fractions in woodworking anyway.

 

[Hutzul]

..........
Despite only being taught metric for measuring and fractions for the division of apples in school I use both, but actually prefer inches.

I prefer oranges myself #-o I'll get my coat :roll:

When I was doing my apprenticeship, college told us students to forget Standard Imperial and Fahrenheit, cos the future would be metric only. Problem was they didn't tell the firms where I worked afterwards =D> :roll:

 

[Dibs-h]

I'm from the generation when things changed - so use both. :lol:

I try not to mix them together - but occasionally that does happen. :shock:

Dibs