The Perfect Tapemeasure

Or at least a better one.

Or at least according to Gizmodo.

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Reply to
HeyBub
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HeyBub wrote the following:

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It's not new. I have had one of those Stanley Fat Maxes for years.

Reply to
willshak

"HeyBub" wrote in news:7eydnTtUBOn93VrRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Yeah, it's "better" for some people, but not all. The FatMax is terrible for what /I/ do for a living, for instance.

My ideal tape (and the one I carry and use almost every hour of every day) is a 10' long, 1/2" wide flimsy.

Reply to
Tegger

HeyBub wrote the following:

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It's not new. I have had one of those Stanley Fat Maxes for years.

*************************************************** But does it have the big hook on the end? That is what they are touting as new.
Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

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Nah.

  1. Fractions. Thomas Jefferson would never approve! Hassle to read the tape, write the number, remember the number, and add or subtract. Got to be metric on both sides.

  1. No hole in the tip. If you need the tip to stay put, you can stick a map tack through the hole.

  2. 25 feet. It means a bulkier, heavier, more expensive tape. Mine is
8m, but I don't recall using it for more than 5m. For longer distances, a fiberglass-reinforced reel tape works better. It has a bigger, better hook, and it's limp, so I can keep tension on it as I move without jiggling the hook loose. I can even use a "paperweight" to keep it in place.

Try the Fastcap PMMR True32 5m or the Fastcap PMMR-FLAT16 (limp blade!)

Reply to
J Burns

I think the extended tape in the photo is metric, even though the retracted one says 25' as so is presumably not (yes, I know there's a lot of perspective distortion in the photo, but look how close the '1' seems to be to the end - and I doubt that the tip is 3" wide :-)

Yeah, 25' is about the most I expect out of a tape before moving to a bigger reel one - but I don't generally like tapes smaller than 25'. I'd still have to take both to a job "just in case", so may as well just take the one 25' one (and a 3' ruler for smaller work)

My dad had one that he used for field work - man, the hook on that thing was sharp!

For metal tape, I wonder about one with interchangeable tips? As someone else mentioned, there are times when the huge tip like that one in the article would get in the way. Maybe it'd be nice to be able to swap 'em around...

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

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Heybub's example is the 25' Fatmax Extreme. All 4 Fatmax Extreme tapes measure inches.

I believe Fatmax came out in 2005. There are 10 other Fatmax models, which are yellow. Six measure inches only, 2 measure mm only, and 2 measure both. Stanley sells 11 of the 14 by the internet. The 3 it won't sell are the mm models and one that has both mm and inches.

I wonder if that's because they've had trouble with customers who assumed they were ordering inch tapes.

So far, my only metric/metric tapes have been 8m. I think I'll try a 5m because smaller tapes are easy to keep in pockets. If I ever need to measure something longer, I can easily extend the range to 10m (almost

33 feet) with a single marker, such as a pencil mark, a piece of tape, or the edge of an envelope. Metric measurements are much easier to add than inches, halves, quarters, eights, sixteenths, and 32nds.
Reply to
J Burns

What bummed me out was when Stanley quit putting those handy sizing charts on the back of anything longer than 16'. But yes, get a Stanley. I worked as a framer for one yr and the brand new top-o-the-line Lufkin I bought broke on the 2nd day of the job.

nb

Reply to
notbob

You don't want to carry 2 tape measures around, yet you'd be willing to carry an extra tip?

How long do you think it would be before you lost the one that wasn't attached to the tape measure? ;-)

Reply to
DerbyDad03

I use a Fat Max and a Bosch DLR 165K laser measuring tool both. The laser is much more accurate for example at getting the distance between two joists for bridging. Both are compact and easy to carry. But I still rely a lot on my old fashioned Lufkin aluminum folding rule. It takes up much less space in a pocket than either of the new gadgets.

Joe

Reply to
Joe

re: "...my old fashioned Lufkin aluminum folding rule..."

I grabbed my Grandfather's Luftkin *wooden* rule from his workshop when he passed away and used it for many years. Even after my young son broke it, I kept both pieces around for a while. It was real tough to part with.

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Note the metal bar inlaid into the first segment.

You could use it to measure an inside measurement which was in between

2 segment lengths.
Reply to
DerbyDad03

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Metric!! LMAO! THAT system went a long way.

Reply to
Steve Barker

Actually, it did. The only people that seem to resist it are unskilled and blue-collar workers in US and UK. Even educated Americans change to it, as science and engineering is taught in metric.

No problem. It's creeping in. liquids have been metric for a couple decades, now. Almost everything else is given in metric as a 2nd measurement. Cars are all built using metric. Seems like the largest holdout is the building industry, what with everything still in inches/ft, etc. Apparently only woodworkers and the govt are too stupid to make the leap. But, with all the Mexicans taking over the trades, that will no doubt end, soon.

nb

Reply to
notbob

IMO: The perfect tape measure is the one best suited for the task/s I have at hand. That's not always the same one. The units used on the tape are whatever method the user feels most comfortable with, or matches the design units being used in the task/s. So I keep both around. Most of the time I like the 1" wide power tape so I can extend it across objects easily without having to have a helper or tack it somehow. One of my new ones will span 6 feet easily before it twists or bends. As long as your hand doesn't shake, that is. Then it's easy to hook it over the far edge and make the measurement. For other jobs I have a 100 foot cloth tape (no idea what the material actually is) that won't lengthen/shorten with temperatures and a reasonable pull on it. I also have a 500 foot cloth tape that's manual (no auto-rewind) that I keep around just because it's so old. Came in handy for laying out stakes per my property dims. Then I have a couple each of metal 6 foot and

12 foot and 25 foot tapes, one metric, one non-metric. I HAD one dual-scale tape I threw out. It was nearly impossible to read it accurately most of the time. HTH,

Twayne`

Reply to
Twayne

I've always thought the metric system made it easier to grab a wrench one size bigger or smaller. Otherwise, I thought inches and fractions were fine until I did some surveying when I was about 40. It was much easier to use the side of the tape marked in hundredths of a foot. I also had a metric tape, and it had one big advantage: straightforward calculations of hectares. I found it easier to convert hectares to acres than to calculate acres from feet.

A couple of years later I went to saw an exact replacement for a rotted board. 22-19/32". It takes time to read that fraction on a tape. You have to remember it long enough to write it down, then read it on the tape again to mark the new board. I found that I'd cut it 21-19/32". When I marked for the cut, I'd been so preoccupied with finding the fraction that I'd looked on the wrong side of the 22. Who needs the distraction of fractions! After a similar experience, I bought a metric tape and loved it.

A few years later I was helping my BIL fix a roof. He needed about one square foot of PT plywood, but it had to have five sides. He measured in inches, climbed down, sawed, climbed up, and found he'd cut wrong. After the third time, I got a pad and offered to write his measurements down. He wouldn't tell me. He ended up wasting a lot of time and ruining most of the sheet of plywood. He should have written his measurements. He also should have used mm because they're so straightforward to read on a tape or a paper.

A neighbor was using inches to attach skirting to his underpinning. He had to measure from the siding to the ground at each end of where a piece of skirting would go, then add a certain amount for underlap. He kept cutting wrong. By eliminating fractions, a metric tape made the job easier and error-free.

The millimeter is about the smallest increment that can conveniently be read on a carpenter's tape. A hundredth of an inch would be too fine and a tenth too coarse. Metric measurements make it easy to calculate volumes and, for materials about as dense as water, weights.

If somebody wants a measurement in whole inches or perhaps halves, I'll use an inch tape. If somebody wants a precise measurement in inches, I find it easier to read the tape in mm, then convert with a calculator.

Reply to
J Burns

Metric is superior in every measurement except temperature. Using whole numbers, one degree of Celsius is approx 4 degrees of Fahrenheit, giving F more granularity in whole numbers.

nb

Reply to
notbob

Huh? A change of 1 degree F is defined to be 5/9 degree C (i.e. less than two).

Reply to
krw

Errr... you are correct. 1C ~= 1.8F. Sorry. Senior moment, but my basic premise is correct.

nb

Reply to
notbob

I think smaller degrees make Fahrenheit inferior. Outdoor alcohol and mercury thermometers (both of which he invented) typically read in increments of 2F because it would be impractical to squeeze in more marks, and nobody would care about 1F anyway.

Fahrenheit started with Romer's scale, by which brine was 0 and boiling was 60. (Before decimals were common, 60 was a convenient number because it was divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)

Initially, Fahrenheit used Romer's 0 and his wife's oral temperature for

100. Then he started thinking about boiling.

By Romer's scale, water froze at 7.5. Faharnheit multiplied by 4 to increase granularity. Boiling was 240. Body temperature was 96. Well, he wanted 64 degrees between freezing and boiling to make it easy to manufacture thermometers, so he adjusted his degrees so 32 was freezing.

Celsius said it would be less confusing to call freezing 0 and boiling

100. Negative numbers were not a stumbling block, and you could use decimals for more precision.
Reply to
J Burns

"J Burns" wrote

In Europe, it is common to be able to set a thermostat at the .5 mark between degrees. One degree F is about the minimum anyone can feel around the comfort level (66 to 74), but pretty imperceptible outside of that.

The first time we went to Italy in cooler weather the thermostat at our villa was set to 14 degrees. We were chilly. I looked up the conversion and found out why! I quickly learned how to do the conversion that I've not needed since one class in high school. Of course, at $6.40 a gallon for heating oil, we kept the temperature lower than home anyway.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

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