alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

How do you find a decimal measurement on a tape measure? 64ths is pretty small for most tapes, however I've never seen a tape with decimal measurements.

BebuLamar

Tape measures aren't meant for precision measurements so they are only marked down to 1mm for the metric part if there is. I only have seen tape measure down to 1/32nd of an inch.
I have never seen tape measure marked in decimal inches although it's quite common on precision scale.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

'cept rulers/tapes in the US are not marked in tenths of inches.....
Converting to decimal inches just makes it more difficult to work with.

Like speed in furlongs per fortnight.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Digital only in electronic measurement that I know of. Your right about the precision part. My digital micrometer is much easier to understand than the old school one. I have learned 10mm isn't 3/8" but I can substitute an 11mm wrench for a 7/16" and a 14mm for a 9/16" and a 8mm for a 5/16". 15mm is what domestic autos commonly use and 12mm is used by the Asians.

BebuLamar

I have a 12 inch and an 18 inch ruler that are marked in 1/10th and 1/100th of an inch.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Yup, I have a 6" scale, but five others are only 16ths. Also have a 6" metric scale.
Not all measuring sticks are created equal.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

I have a Japanese motorcycle. The shop manual measurements are all in metric. When I overhauled the engine I set my vernier caliper to metric and went on with my business. The only time I had to get out the calculator was when I used my old SAE micrometers. No big deal, you do what you need to do. Most new cars and other new stuff are metric while the old stuff is SAE. So changing to the metric system wouldn’t change anything, no different than when I convert metric to English measurements. I already have English and metric wrenches and sockets in addition to Whitworth, which is used on the English built Perkins engine in my tractor. (Whitworth is 17/32, 19/32, etc). So other than Chinese factories needing double the tooling, the US switching to metric would change nothing other than having to change every speed limit and distance sign in the entire country, a huge financial cost to get absolutely nothing in return. No different than every Chinese having to learn to write in English with the net result being a lot of money spent, a lot of frustration and absolutely nothing to gain.

BebuLamar

Do they make the Crecent wrench in metric or SAE?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Going back even further, you would have needed a set of Whitworth tools to work on English cars from the 1950s. I have a set of wrenches and sockets that I'll never use, but I'm keeping them - just in case.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I use both measurement systems all the time. Except for cooking where I use all the old school measures. For photography it has been for many decades a mixture of "English" and "Metric". For most science "things" I personally use metric including mm for my Seashells. Maps, driving, geography I like most Americans use "English". Interesting that the UK dropped "English Measurements" some time ago, 1960s? There are exceptions and confusion every where with this. Some foreign food labels are strange, giving heat or food energy in joules instead of calories. Both are considered metric. Kilo-joules are commonly used by Engineers and Physicists, Kilo-calories are commonly used by Chemists, Biologists, and the Medical Sciences. Electronics & Electrical fields usually use Watts. Mass, Weight, Energy, Force, Work, it all gets worse. . .

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

Tuff S##T for China

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Haha, both. My Snap On says 300mm on one side and 12" on the other.

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bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

My buddy has a ‘74 Norton motorcycle, built when England was in the process of converting over. It had a mixture of SAE, metric and Whitworth fasteners. He needed three sets of tools.

Joules are a quantity-time measure. The difference between watts and Joules is similar to the different between gallons and gallons per minute.

BebuLamar

Watt is Joules per second.

jinx

One Chinese inch is 33.33 mm.