Interesting video on wood movement.

[woodchucker]

This guy Jack Houweling puts it in perspective.

Geez I knew it moved, but when you see how a trapped wood movement can appear it's remarkable.

[-MIKE-]

I'm glad I picked up on the Canadian accent, because the guy kept saying "mil" when referring to his measurements. It wasn't until he showed the reading on his gauge that I realized he was talking millimeters and not thousandths of an inch.

Do all Canadians really say "mil" in reference to millimeters?

[brian]

It's not a Canadian thing, but a metric thing. In the lab when working with milliliters, it's common to refer to them as 'mils'. A 'mil' is commonly used but the context must be known for it to have meaning (i.e length, volume, mass).

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------------------------------ Just illustrates what every engineering student is taught about column loading.

Euler column formula. P = n ? 2 E I / L 2 (1)

Lew

[Lew Hodgett]

---------------------------------------------------------------- This will help clarify things.

Lew

[Swingman]

A 'mil' is also an angular measurement (milliradian) commonly used in the military for adjusting rifle/sniper and artillery fire, among other things.

An artillery 'Forward Observer" bets his life in close combat on the fact that: "1 mil of angle subtends an arc of 1 meter (+/-) at 1,000 meters." (actually it is the chord of the arc he is attempting to correctly calculate to get rounds on target, but close counts when the effective burst radius of a 105mm round is 50 meters). For (American) military purposes there are 6400 'mils' in a circle ... actually a bit less mathematically, but close enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and artillery fire.

[pastedavid]

Interesting, cheers!

[pastedavid]

Mil, short for milli. Milli just means "one-one thousandth of". It needs co ntext to fully clarify.

In the UK millimetres were abbreviated (when spoken) to "milli" whilst "mil " referred to 1/1000 of an inch. This is according to my grandad who was in the trade up until the 1950s or so. I have no idea what the it is now, but I am pretty certain it's all metric, so mil or milli would refer to millim etres.

[Dave Balderstone]

I typically say "thou" or "ten thou" for imperial, and "mil" for metric, eh?

[-MIKE-]

I guess I wonder how we could be in such a hurry to save syllables. Are we that lazy we can't say the whole word? :-)

It's kind of like (the opposite) when people speak initialisms or acronyms that are much longer to say than the actual words they shorten in writing.

[Bill Leonhardt]

Some years ago, I was getting equipment made for my company (American) in t he UK. I learned that the UK company used the term "mil" to refer to milli meters and the term "thou" to refer to thousandths of an inch. All went we ll dimensionally until we started to do flow measurements. The UK company even hooked up an old flow meter that measured gallons per minute. It took us a while to figure out that the poor performance we got was because they were measuring in Imperial Gallons and I was used to using US Gallons. Af etr we realized that, all was well.

Bill

[krw]

It's nothing more (or less) than jargon. It makes for more efficient communication among people who have learned the dialect. Those silly syllables do add up.

What, and stop creating new words? Where would we be without the "laser".

Now, where did I put my "laser"? ;-)

[Puckdropper]

Dave Balderstone wrote in news:070420140831505537%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca:

The sooner we can eliminate the "mil" unit, the better. It's just uncommon enough that those unfamiliar with the unit assume it means millimeter, and close enough that the error won't be obvious.

Puckdropper

[Bill]

Like Swingman said, there are about 6400 mils in a full revolution. It was explained to me that the idea was to *avoid fractions* out in the field. Remember the pre-calculator days?

[Dave Balderstone]

Makes more sense for the USA to join the rest of the world...

[Puckdropper]

Dave Balderstone wrote in news:070420141833299273%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca:

Sure would be nice to eliminate the dual system. I don't care if the rest of the world joins us or we join the rest of the world, simply not having two systems would help quite a bit.

I'll still have to have two sets of wrenches, taps, nuts, etc, but maybe my great grandchildren won't have to. Let's do it, it's for the children!

Puckdropper

[Swingman]

No kidding .... and if you don't carry both, guaranteed the ones you have on hand aren't the ones you need.

[Leon]

And I always thought a mil was a ton of money!

[Leon]

We are not ready for mediocre yet! ;~)

[jo4hn]

or a tiny amount of money - $.001 mahalo, jo4hn