Ruler, metric/imperial

[Don Fry]

Daft, but I’ve got one of these, and it’s worn out. Also club mates, as do I, who like the flip and it changes scale on top/bottom edge. 
Can’t find this facility nowadays. Ideas?

[Ernie]

go totally metric  it makes sense

ernie

[John Wagg]

Plenty of steel rules on the inter-web but whether they flip like that. ❓

[Cuban8]

Well, if NASA got to the moon and back several times in Imperial measurements it can't be all bad. We won't mention Mars Climate Orbiter, naturally!

[Ernie]

Its all totally crazy   12 inches to a foot 3 feet to a yard 1760 yards etc   not to mention acres, groats, beaufort scale, lbs, pints, drams, 

Good old Napoleon

ernie

[john davidson 1]

We learnt metric at school 60 years ago, why have we hung on to avoirdupois etc,

[John Lee]

I have a ruler like that made by Draper. A quick search shows it is still readily available.

[Cuban8]

Rods, Poles and Perches........Bushels and Pecks........what's the problem😁

[J D 8 - Moderator]

   I do have a steel rule that is imperial one side metric the other but not both the same side. 

I was in the last year in my school that did no metric stuff, It seemed like a lot of wasted time, metric takes over from imperial [ well sort of] Lots of time spent learning to work LSD [Pounds shillings and pence] and we went decimal.  As for stuff like long division ect calculators arrived on the scene.

 😁 Calculator second item I purchased on leaving school after my welder.😁

[Learner]

48 minutes ago, Ernie said:

go totally metric  it makes sense

ernie

How are we going to buy tyres if we don't use both!

[John Lee]

Or fly! Runway length in meters, altitude in feet, speed in knots, distances in nautical miles, altimeter setting hectopascals the list goes on.... 

[Cliff Bastow]

My old RAF instructor would have a fit if we called it a ruler,

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Not possible to work in metric alone.

[EvilC57]

1 hour ago, Cliff Bastow said:

My old RAF instructor would have a fit if we called it a ruler,

Quite right, it’s a rule. King Charles is a ruler!

[Don Fry]

John, above is right. I have a stack of balsa to be the centre of attraction of a very good model shop. In both metric and imperial. Now my club mates, the builders, would be excluded from plans from Imperial measure countries, if their metric minds were subject to exclusion, 3/16, flip, it’s 5 mm. My brain does that, but it’s actually calibrated in SI units, but does anyone have an imperial to metric rule what will measure ( and vica versa, Latin as well) a line to both standards without moving it up and down, just flip. The flip function is the desired result.

PS, I’ve actually seen Napoleons meter, it’s very nice, an oversized yard, from a very small, not accurate arc of world circumference from that time. Nice, mind. A block of Platinum. Missus would drool.

 

so I look for a tool, hold against a line, one edge does metric, flip the rule, don’t move it up or down and I get imperial.

 

Thank you John Wagg. I wish the maker of my rule had put his name on it, I’ve got lots of rules, but flip, same measure, none. I used to have 4 or 5, but time passes, and occasionally a band saw doing the conversation also slices the converter. 

 

Evil, Cliff, as a pupil of his Grammar School, I’d say, ex ruler, without head,  entitled to rule only. Can’t say “er” after that. 

[kc]

What have the Romans   Americans ever done for us ?    Saved feet and inches is one thing!    Wihout the Americans we probably couldn't buy anything in feet and inches.

But it's horses for courses -   if you build a fence or a shed etc then feet and inches are handier,  if you measure small parts then millimetres may be easier.    You are free to choose which you prefer because rulers are available in metric or imperial.

 

 

When you buy a ruler try to get one with engraved markings - they won't wear out easily like Don's aluminium one.   Stainless steel won't rust easily in a workshop environment .   Best of all are the satin chrome type from Rabone etc

Edited September 26 by kc

[kc]

5 minutes ago, Don Fry said:

does anyone have an imperial to metric rule what will measure ( and vica versa, Latin as well) a line to both standards without moving it up and down

Those electronic vernier calipers can show metric/inches at flick of a switch.   Only trouble is the batteries run out easily.

[Don Fry]

KC, the Romans gave me , in France, the right of way, ie I’m to the right of you at a junction. BTW, To this day, these quaint practices are observed with aircraft, and ships. BTW, a 12 inch caliper, what can go wrong, with a very expensive thing to drop. 

[Peter Jenkins]

Apparently, the Romans also bequeathed us the Railway Standard Gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 inches.  Used to the the size of the ruts in the roads that were made by Roman horse drawn chariots/wagons.  Two horses arses wide apparently!

[Cliff Bastow]

A rule is for measuring a ruler is for drawing straight lines. If you look on a rule the measurements start at the end but on a ruler there is a space before the measurements start. 

[Simon Chaddock]

What is amazing is just how much of the world uses 4 ft 8 1/2 ins primarily because we made and built much of it.

Last time I went to the National Railway museum they had just brought in a South African Beyer Garratt locomotive. Absolutely huge on 3ft 6ins gauge but there on cab was the makers plate "Vulcan Works Newton the Willows England".

UK made it and shipped it out and then 60 years later we shipped it back!

 

[Robert Cracknell]

Well, I'm going metric inch by inch...!

[Cliff Bastow]

As an engineer I come across both and can use either. I tend to use which one seems easier at the time. If I am doing a rough estimation of something I will use the one that it comes nearest to. Such as I need 20 meters of something or I need 3 feet of that!

There are some strange mixtures of things. For instance chain comes in imperial sizes but metric lengths.  So you order 5 Metres of 3/4 inch pitch.

[leccyflyer]

For pretty much everything in the workshop involving measuring and making anything I use metric - millimetres are so much simpler to use without messing about with fractions. For model sizes, areas, wingspans, prop sizes and weights, I translate and am much more comfortable with feet and inches, ounces and pounds. I put that down to having been brought up through a mixture of measurement systems, but having those imperial measurements embedded. When it comes to maps, 3D earth models and volumetrics it gets even more complicated, with a real mixture of units - I have no internal familiarity with acres for areas, everything is in square metres or square kilometres, depths translate easily on the fly between feet and metres, but liquid and gas volumes are a total mess - all largely redundant these days though.

 

In terms of rulers I've got a stack of them in the workshop, but hadn't ever thought of that flip method, so will give that a try out. One specialist tape and ruler type peculiar to my previous industry is the decimal foot scale, which came about due to the advent of computers, which do not tend to deal well with fractions of a foot or inches. So I have a few decimal foot tapes, with the feet split into tenths of a foot - entering 10,509.75ft into the computer is much more useful than 10,509'9" 

[Martin Dance 1]

On the topoic of odd measurement scales. Whilst at school I would during holidaysI would track down the estate forester, (my Dad was a gamekeeper on a sporting estate) One day the forester was felling s few Beech trees, and he said how many cubic feet do you think there are in that log? I guessed, clearly wrong. So he passed me a tape measure and go said and measure it. The tape was one of those leather cased types that groundsmen and surveyors used. I pulled out the tape to be confronted with a set of divisions I'd never seen before. He explained it was a quarter girth tape, and showed me how to measure the log. Having obtained two measurements, length and girth in quarter girths he used a little booklet ready reckoner to calculate the number of cubic feet in the log.