Tesco had some "everything for a pound" shelves so bought a spare 5 metre tape rule for the shed. Noticed it only had metric markings but reckoned I could cope. At home - unwrapped and found the body width marked 2 3/4" ... no metric Dang these chineese...
All metric measuring kit's great - I buy something almost every time I go to France. Mixed units aren't though :(
Chris
Wow! Do all Tescos have these?
I normally have to go to France to pick up metric only tapes and my supply is running low.
Christian.
Surely I can't be the only one that juggles between metric and imperial depending which whole number or division comes closest to the mark?
:¬)
I have one of those tapes. Pink arrrgh... from LIDL. I find it invaluable but wish that there were such a thing as imperial. I can remember the introduction of dual gauge wooden rulers but can't for the real McCoy with metal tapes.
I wish I had had the foresight I compensate for with hindsight. I have to keep trying to think what the imperial for c*ms is.
If there is a slitty eyed spammer on here that can get them made, please post to this thread you spamming Knut. Even juggling would be better than the standard 2@'s eye view the dual alternatve provides.
The message from "Pet_@_www.gymratz.co.uk_;¬)" contains these words:
Nah - I do it all the time. 6'4"2mm for example.
Metric or imperial on their own are useless - you need a dual marked tape measure to cope with DIY. Anyone saying otherwise is expressing a purely political opinion.
Andy.
The trouble with dual marked tapes is that if you measure left to right it is metric: right to left it is imperial. I am going to stock up with imperial only tapes next time I am in the USA.
In the oil patch, we have measuring tapes with 'big' inches versus 'small' inches:
We often use decimal feet rather than feet and inches. So a length of drill pipe is often described as 31.5 feet, rather than
31'6".So for pipe measurements, we have tapes in decimal feet ( feet and tenths of a foot. ) These are 'big' inches.
When I worked[1] for the council we had employee timesheets in decimal hours.
Owain
[1] Unusual amongst council employees, I know.
Carlisle by J4? of the M6 did last week.
I tend to use which ever unit is convient for nice sized numbers. 4'6" i= s OK so is 54" but 1371.6mm isn't. I'll occasionally mix and match as well= "1 foot 3 inches 2mm" much easier to picture than 383mm.
RS do metric only tapes.
I wouldn't mind dual-marked tapes so much if the metric measurements were along the top edge of the tape... I find it much more awkward to use the bottom edge of the tape.
As do York Survey Supplies
And Axminster
I keep meaning to get some. I mostly use metric now, I suspect I tend to use imperial because often they are the marks which are easier to read for a particular measurement
Yes, the comments regarding dual-marked tapes are perfectly valid. I'll amend my comment and say that the serious DIYer needs one of each!
Anyone else found that getting imperial floorboards is next to impossible? I needed 3/4" thick boards 6&7/8" wide but had to buy oversize metric boards and have them planed down to width and run through a thicknesser to get the thickness, what a bloody waste of effort, why not supply imperial boards?
In the end I found an old boy at a large Jewson outlet who was sympathetic and did the alterations for me but what a palaver!
Andy
Andy
After the French Revolution, the calender was amended to metric by the revolutionaries, with the inevitable leftovers designated as revolutionary holidays. Lasted about two years IIRC.
Andy.
The message from "Andy" contains these words:
Not at all - go to timber yard, ask them for 3/4" boards and they'll cut them for you.
There are two proper sawmills here - both are imperial-orientated. If you go in there and ask for zrgevp sizes you'll be scoffed as a newbie.
Although they have 1 lb bags of nails in the sales area in supposed psuedo zrgevp dimensions.
Nope! There is a solution
Last time I was in the U.S. I spotted what I thought was the ultimate in silly products. This was a contractor's calculator. Basically one can input figures in their deprecated old imperial feet and inches, including fractions, and it works out results including the trigonometry for roof angles and so on.
Maybe they'll enter the 21st century at some point....
My other pet annoyance is that all tapes I have seen are marked in centimetres rather than millimetres. I know it's not exactly advanced arithmetic to divide / multiply by 10 but it really would be easier if the tape was just marked in millimetres to start with.
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