But but but
[insert usual protest at the lack of jubs, elephants per second and Waleses]
It's official: El Reg's Special Projects Bureau will henceforth be operating almost exclusively in SI units. Yup, it's pints all round today as our imperial versus metric poll found readers overwhelmingly in favour of permanently chopping off feet and consigning quarts and ounces to the dustbin of history. No less than 1,773 …
Of course, it's only square, un-hip, old fashioned 'British Empire' places such as the UK and Australia that use "four by two" anyway.
Cool, more with-it places, usually those on the western side of the Atlantic, would only ever say "two by four".
And if you're a Woodie, then you'd never assume you'd be getting more than 45 x 95mm--err I mean 95 x 45mm--anyway! Even less if the timber is properly/finely dressed (not that IT types would ever want to know anything about such an erudite subject of course)!
;-)
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On an archaeological project in Israel, we needed wood to build screens (sifters to you Brits) and discovered that "1X4"s and "2X4"s (in the US the smaller number is listed first) were actually full sized rather than nominal. Here in the US the cross section of a "nominal" 2X4 is slightly less than two-thirds of the area of a fully dimensioned piece. Our Israeli screens actually were deeper than the equivalent US version built from "nominal" lumber. We had to sand the wood since it was all rough sawn, but that doesn't make that much of a change in dimension.
The "explanation" usually given for the undersized lumber is that smoothing lumber to S4S requires removing 1/2 an inch in width and 1/4 inch in thickness. Humbug, I think. The parent "rough-sawn" pieces were under-sized to begin with.
Sifter???? The only time I would use that term is in "sugar-sifter", a sort of large salt-cellar for sugar, or in the context of sifting flour (to get the lumps out). Why would you need 2x4 (or 4x2) to make something to sift sugar/flour? Do you perhaps mean 'sieve'? ("Two peoples separated by a common language"....)
... boat-loads of soil at various digs between Yorkshire & the Antonine Wall on numerous weekends during my O & A-level studies. We used sifters, not sieves, and called ourselves "shifters & sifters".
Perhaps "sieve" is a Welsh thing? (Yes, I'm assuming, but given the handle ...)
> "three metres of four-by-two"
> Oh God! We are doomed!
That's nothing. Years back I did some work for a company that imported rock, by container, to make headstones and like out of.
It was rated in something like "kilograms per square inch" for the container, thoroughly mixing imperial and metric...
Here in the USofA, 2x4s are uniformly 1.5x3.5 inches, in many standard lengths. These days. I rarely reference Wiki, but see their article on "Lumber" for a fairly decent, if rough & minimal, overview.
For example, this house is framed with standard 2x4 wall studs & attendant plates, sills & other crap that makes for a nice, tidy, square-cornered, box shaped rooms, with 8-foot ceilings, and convenient wall lengths with 16-inch on center studs that minimizes the number of 4x8 sheets of sheet-rock and insulation waste. Except here in the office/attic/dormers/shed-dormers space, which was a bitch to insulate, rock & mud. I still have nightmares ;-)
On the other hand, the house my Great Grandfather built (1880s) is built from hand hewn Redwood timbers, like a barn. No two are alike. Most are between 6.5" and 8" square. The spaces between them were filled in with non-structural boards split from logs, inside is lath & plaster, outside is hand-split redwood shakes. There isn't a 90 degree corner in the place. Later, in the 1920s, a "modern" addition was built with full dimensional lumber. In other words, real 2"x4" and 4"x4" and 2"x6" boards (etc.). In the 1970s, my father & I added yet more floor space with the above mentioned "modern" 2x4s. Today, repairing the old girl is an exercise in "measure all angles & distances four times, draw it out, double check it in ACad[tm] (if I have that section in the computer yet), spill a drop to $DEITY, and hopefully cut once".
We had to repair the porch of our 1896 house---it was worn badly by a century of folks tramping in and out. So, it being made of 1" tongue & groove, the builder went out and bought some more. You can probably see this coming: looked at edge-on, the profile of the floor is now roughly
------------- \_______________/---------------
---------------------------------------------------------
due to the fact that for modern timber, 1" nominal (isn't that a lovely phrase?) is actually 3/4". Shoulda shimmed it before installing, but who knew?
Next time, ask. There is a reason that I have a couple sizes of planer ...
Probably the most important tip I can give to wannabe DIY folks: IF YOU DON'T FUCKING ALREADY KNOW HOW, ASK A PROFESSIONAL before you fucking cock up the entire project!
As with IT, the devil is in the details ...
So not just an unnecessarily accurate metric conversion, but also the wrong unit for the dimension involved anyway. Nice.
P.S. Ignoring the mixture of units, "an eight by four sheet of 20mm MDF" and "three metres of four-by-two", would translate more to an 8km jaunt for a 2.5m by 1.2m slab of 20mm MDF, and three metres of 100x50mm, which are all perfectly manageable units, within the accuracy of wood-cutting (which is generally atrocious anyway), and actually used just as much, if not a lot more than "2 by 4" by anyone in the trade nowadays.
P.P.S. if you really want to get finicky, you'd have to ask for 13/16ths MDF, which is just as silly as stating metric conversions to hundredths of millimetres for a 2.5m bit of wood.
"So not just an unnecessarily accurate metric conversion, but also the wrong unit for the dimension involved anyway. Nice."
It is what we, on my planet, call "humour", at a guess. In the UK, we still have a thing call "a yard of ale", beloved of drunken stag night pub crawls and the like. Google it.
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"three metres of four-by-two"
Think that is a perfectly ok description as seem to recall a ruling that "four-by-two" was considered to be descriptive name of the type of wood (and no-one really expected it to be exactly 4" x 2") which was sold by length - and it was the length that was controlled by weights and measures legislation and so had to be expressed in metres.
Most places I buy timber (in the UK) sell it by the metric foot, i.e. 0.9 M, 1.2 M, 1.5 M, etc. Therefore 'three metres' would be perfectly acceptable, but any other whole number of metres not divisible by 0.3 would not.
Seems like a good compromise for the Imperial apologists.
Only recently, I had cause to measure and mark the ends of a 5M-long sling of timber. The sling was nominally marked 4" x 2" but I measured and end-marked each length of timber with a marker pen in millimeters, for example '5045' or '5020' etc. It's mm because that's what the standard says and what the building industry uses here in Australia.
Technically--a la standard--this size would be 100 x 50 x 5000mm (unseasoned), 90 x 45 x 5000mm (dressed/finished), but even the dumbest would instantly know what '4 x 2 x 5000' or '4 x 2 x 5M' would mean. As with anyone with the vaguest clue about the subject, I'd interchange any of these terms without a second thought.
BTW, a 'sling' is the term used for bundle of timber strapped together, the sort one often sees on the back of trucks etc.
Actually, 2x4 is not the same as 4x2. You need a left-handed saw to work with 2x4; right-handed for 4x2. Of course, most pros will have both, but for the money-conscious DIY enthusiast it's a bit of a pain at times. That's why the UK officially standardized on 4x2 after the B&Q scandal of 1987, although you can still find the occasional timber yard willing to sell you 2x4 "under the counter".
"Actually, 2x4 is not the same as 4x2. You need a left-handed saw to work with 2x4; right-handed for 4x2."
The exact opposite in Australia & NZ, of course. Same for reverse muffler bearings (chromed, or otherwise). I won't get into Melbourne Turned threads .. nobody can figure 'em out. I usually use an inverse angle grinder to remove 'em ... nearly any fast-ener is better & safer.
But surprised to see that height and weight are also not preferred exceptions to the metric rule - even my kids give their height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds - as does everybody else I know.
On the same note, how many people actually know or state their clothes sizes (waist/chest/inside leg, etc) in cm? Again, none that I know.
Oh and collar sizes too. :-)
But surprised to see that height and weight are also not preferred exceptions to the metric rule - even my kids give their height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds - as does everybody else I know.
I don't. I try to use metric as much as possible these days. No idea what my weight is in either measure, but I've known for years that I'm 178cm tall.
I'm kind of half and half on this due to metric being pushed in school when I grew up. I prefer people's height in feet and inches, but work weight in kilos almost exclusively. In fact I struggle to remember how much stones and ounces are in any meaningful terms.
I think measurements of people mostly stick with the old imperial measurements because the numbers are easier to visualise, eg I can picture a man who is 5"6' but I struggle with 178cm. Maybe if Decimetres had been clearly labelled as one of our options when the metric conversion was on the go.
Actually, I express my height and weight in both as needed, depending on who I am talking to. My Nordic SO finds the whole concept of inches baffling, too, which is a good incentive to be able to switch at will.
That said, I do generally buy clothes in the UK, so I look for 44 inch chest rather than 112cm or whatever, and have to use google or similar as an ad-hoc unit converter otherwise. I suspect that is just because I find clothing sizes confusing.. As for collar sizes.. wot? They always confuse me, as the thickness of your neck seems loosely coupled with how long your torso is, or how wide your shoulders, so I often have to get people to measure me, if I am shirt shopping and they size them like that..
I have never seen anything that I would consider "beer" in a 40oz bottle. I've never heard the 22oz called "a bomber", either, but I have hear it refereed to as a "long pint". What side of the Sierra Nevada[1] are you on?
[1] Mountain range, not beer.
You can only get fortys in certain states. Like go to Florida and ask for a Forty. You'll get a quart, or a 32 ounce bottle for those of you who are US unit challenged. True 40 oz bottles are illegal here.
FL Statutes Title XXXIV
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND TOBACCO
Chapter 563 - "BEER"
Sub-Chapter 6
Section 6
All malt beverages packaged in individual containers sold or offered for sale by vendors at retail in this state shall be in individual containers containing no more than 32 ounces of such malt beverages; provided, however, that nothing contained in this section shall affect malt beverages packaged in bulk or in kegs or in barrels or in any individual container containing 1 gallon or more of such malt beverage regardless of individual container type.
However, we call those 32 Oz. bottles "fortys" colloquially for some unknown reason because we're "spercial" (read: dumb as fucking rocks) like that, but its 8 ounces short. And given how stupid alot of people are here, they probably think a quart is 40 ounces.
Its a damn shame the nearest place Ive ever seen a forty ounce to here was in Tennessee, where I bought one and proceeded to drink it in a field by a Wal-Mart while on my way back to Fort Sam Houston from Fort Campbell. Come to think of it we had them in Texas too.
I dunno if we had them in Georgia because when I lived there we lived in a formerly dry county (it isn't anymore, the Navy skewed voting toward allowing drinking) by the Submarine Base, and then later moved across the State Line to Florida before my father left the Navy. Nobody bought booze in Georgia anyway, everyone just drove to Florida, taxes were lower (at the time anyway, that probably isn't true anymore) and you could buy booze on Sunday, after 9 AM anyway.
So here's a beer, as long as it isn't 40 ounces. I don't need my door getting kicked in.
And Austin-Rover, probably some of the french manufacturers too at the time, the reason the switch never stuck was simply cost, when metric tyres are twice the price of the nearest imperial size, which would you go for?
You buy the imperial wheels from the previous model or some aftermarket alloys that fit the car in question and easily cover the price difference.
I think you have to blame the French, and Michelin in particular, for this piece of nonsense. They persuaded car makers to fit wheels with metric diameters to various vehicles, Montegos and Saabs as well as BMWs, and thus tied you buying replacement tyres from Michelin. Expensive they were too. I think the car manufacturers got the message from angry customers and dropped the idea tout de suite as they say.
Having grown up in Germany I'm metric through and through, but it's god-awful for cooking - grams is useless for anything but salt and spices, and kilos anything but potatoes.
I tried to lobby for a new ounce, being exactly 25g and having 20 to the new pound of exactly 0.5kg, but it never caught on :-(
"Yeah, funny how something worked on for more than a thousand years and tested on ordinary people doing ordinary things every day of the lives turns out to actually work quite well. Just luck I guess."
For varying definitions of "worked"? Almost every current imperial unit has had several different definitions over the period of time you suggest, many of them concurrent, for example. Fortunately the SI era brought some stability to the inch as it has has, since the early-mid 20th century, been defined in terms of SI units. A number of units of volume and weight are still different on either side of the Atlantic.
Having first converted to decimal currency in 1966, metrication in Australia took place between 1970 and 1988:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
It was not at all painful, and we all managed to adjust.
If we can do it, I suspect that anyone can.
All it requires is the desire to do so.
But pressure is quoted in either inches of mercury or millibars. Hence the following radio exchange between a US aircraft and UK air traffic control:
AT: Descend to altitude 10,000 feet on a QNH of 1015
AC: Can you give me that in inches
AT: Certainly, descend to an altitude of 120,000 inches on a QNH of 1015
First they came for the ell,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a seamster.
Then they came for the rood,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a surveyor.
Then they came for the scruple,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t an apothecary.
Then they came for the pint,
and there was no one left to draw one for me.