Metric on tape measures

I'm lucky as I'm only a train ride away from Buck and Ryan's two branches in London. And other similar outlets. Its only the local DIY sheds which are a first port of call, that I find rather depressing. I've also sometimes ordered stuff on the B&R* website which wasn't in stock in the shop and collected it few days later.

I've also noticed they stock a Stanley Metre Rule in stainless steel which has the metric on the top, which is unusual, for Stanley. Although as a "metre rule" its maybe intended for a purely European Market. Although being etched and shiny rather than matt and simply printed like the cheap and cheerful Wickes aluminium rule its probably a bit harder to read in all types of light, even if it will last for centuries.

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its just as well I only buy new rules and tapes every 20 years or so,

*This isn't puffing B&R as nowadays their shops which are smaller are mainly full of top of the range powertools and high margin items and are a shadow of what the main B&R shop used to be. Before a succession of buyouts and takeovers. Also you can sometimes wait two weeks for stuff to arrive at the shop from the supplier.

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams
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Surely when running a tape across a board, both edges of the tape are next to the work ? For really long lengths I myself use a large paper clip to secure the tab thing to the edge on the left, and press down on the tape with my left hand and mark against the scale. Now surely this should be easiest if the scale you're marking against runs along the top edge of the tape.

The thing is I've been using the same three steel tapes now for around the last

20 years. I've only ever needed three to be sure of having one handy if the others were temporarily mislaid. Now I know I've sawn up loads of panels in that time using using homemade straight edges (factory edges of panels), clamps and powersaws. But its only when I decided to replace one or more of the tapes that I even noticed the metric which I always use ran along the bottom edge of the tape. As I never filmed myself working I'm just puzzled how I did this at all, all this time and never noticed just how awkward it is. Or maybe I'm just dumb, dunno.

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams

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> Or is that not what you meant?

Thanks. I've already been pointed towards Fisco by another poster.

Stanley and many of the other big manufacturers have the markings on metric only tapes along only the bottom edge if the pictures on the Buck and Ryan website are anything to go by.

While the DIY sheds which stock and sell everything in metric don't even stock metric only tapes at all. Only combination tapes with imperial running along the top edge.

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams

I have had it for years and bought it from a market stall for about £2.50. I always thought it was backwards as I like to have the zero on the right. Not that it matters much as I wanted a straight edge for cutting really. It really is stainless as it has been abused by being left out in all sorts of weather and its still perfect.

Reply to
dennis

Do any tape measures sold in the US have imperial and metric scales. The one that I bought over there, made by Stanley, was imperial only.

Reply to
Andrew May

cm are the spawn of the devil... As you can see from your error:

150.2cm is *not* 1520mm or 1.52m but 1502mm/1.502m.

In my view mm or m only. Where one switches from mm to m I'm not sure, probably greater than 5m. Sheet materials are all sized in mm

2400 x 1600 etc...
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

I took a look at the site hoping to see what one of these bonkers tape measures looked like, but I couldn't find any.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

Another point I hadn't considered when comparing it to the Wickes aluminium version is thinness. The Stanley one is only 1 mm thick whereas the Wickes one was thicker - I didn't actually measure it. And the thinner it is the less parallax error there's going to be. Unless you lay out big money for one with a bevelled edge. Which is where steel tapes also score so highly being so thin. You think there'd be a market for a truly flat and wide steel tape going up to say 3 metres without all the gimmics belt hooks etc. Dunno. My own straight edges used for cutting and testing etc are thick Maun jobs bought decades ago. They're ordinary steel but have always been regularly treated with furniture polish.

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams

Possibly she learned in the era of CGS rather than SI?

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Reply to
RubberBiker

Isn't the ISO or whatever standard just that, either use mm or metres, but not cm. Seems to work. Apart from in schools!

Reply to
<me9

Yes - years ago, I ran a needlework business in the US, and the tapes we sold (steel and 'soft') had both scales. That was my choice, though - my suppliers also stocked imperial-only tapes.

Reply to
S Viemeister

And what do want me to do ? Give you a medal ?

Anyway, good for you. You've just wasted ten minutes of your life vainly trying to prove that someone posting on Usenet was lying.

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other hobbies, besides losing pointless arguments ?

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams

If it's a retractable tape, the curve is used to make it work, ie you can't have it flat.

Reply to
Clive George

I thought the retraction was achieved by a spring in the middle of the tape while the sole purpose of the curved profile was to keep the tape rigid when extended. Which wouldn't necessarily be an issue when measuring panels on the horizontal. Or with the end of the tape secured.

michael adams

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Reply to
michael adams

You need a tape covered in that smart paper, and some sort of GPS doohickey - the tape could detect where you are in relation to it, and print the scale the correct way up for you. And if we all have RFID tags implanted in our necks the tape would even know who was using it and could show the scale in the user's preferred units.

;-)

Reply to
Jules

Yes, ISTR seeing ones for sale in the local 'shed.

They do teach metric in schools here, incidentally - our 11 year old came home just the other day with homework where they were supposed to measure various stuff in metric using a tape measure. At which point I discover that I actually own four tape measures (five if I count a short non-steel one) and all of them are inches-only :-)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

Yes, seems to be a spatial thing with me, too. I can use cm and mm happily for stuff that's about the size of a sheet of paper or less, but if building a shed, say, then the sorts of numbers that feet and inches cough up just seem easier to work with.

I know I'm 5'10" tall, but I'd have to run the conversion to metric in my head if someone asked. With weights I naturally seem to prefer lbs and stone than kg (although I'm actually utterly crap at converting weights between metric and imperial - unlike distances I never quite got the hang of it).

Going the other way, I find it much easier to deal with engine-related matters in cc, and now that I'm in the US I keep finding myself doing mental calculations to covert to and from ci (although more and more US vehicles seem to quote cc these days - presumably for marketing reasons, because bigger numbers seem better :-)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

It takes two to make an argument and I wasn't one of them.

I didn't say there weren't any, I said I couldn't find any (at least not before I got bored looking at lots of pictures of metric+imperial tapes that were open and metric-only tapes that were closed). I wasn't contradicting you, I was hoping you might provide a link, since you knew where to look. If it's any consolation you're a better looker than I am. :-)

Anyway, thanks for the link if not the abuse, and what I'd like to know now is, *why* would anyone design a measure like that? What's the point?

Reply to
Mike Barnes

Where as I was re-educated in mm and metres. Give me a dimension in centimetres, I have to convert it to mm to understand how big/long it is. I can readily convert between metric and imperial, but only if the metric is *not* in cm's.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

Why has time not been metricated and used? :-)

Dave

Reply to
Dave

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