Ski Builders Forum

I don't know why I never bought one sooner but I stopped on the way home from work today and bought a metric measuring tape. Been working on a new planer crib and marking off the key points in MM... constantly converting inches to mm/cm. DUH! btw 10mm = 0.3937inches or about 6.30/16 on the measuring tape... Try measuring that accurately.

My partner in skibuilding has been building homes and custom cabinetry for 20 years. After we started skibuilding he has fully converted to metric in everything we do.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Metric-Tape-Measure ... 3cb1f41150

I got one that has both on it, metric on one edge and inches on the other. Can be tricky if you aren't paying attention to which side you are reading.

Mine has both as well and yeah, you have to pay attention to which side you're reading. Picked it up at Sears. It's already made my ski building life much easier.

I remember we had to learn the metric system in school because the US was going to switch over to it... that was like 40 years ago!

skidesmond wrote:Mine has both as well and yeah, you have to pay attention to which side you're reading. Picked it up at Sears. It's already made my ski building life much easier.

I remember we had to learn the metric system in school because the US was going to switch over to it... that was like 40 years ago!

I can't believe you guys still have feet and inches.
(how many inches in a mile?)
Talking to my oldest daughter about that today she was totally perplexed

I was in high school during the transition.
There was quite a bit of opposition to the switch at the time but I'm glad we switched, metric is so much easier.
That being said there is still a need to know the imperial system (until the rest of the world switches)
Almost all the stuff I have to deal with at work comes from the states
Shafts and pulleys are typically measured in inches, belts in mm.
Refrigerant pressures are measured in psi.
But systems are charged with Kgs of refrigerant.
(Although I could switch my scale to lbs the capacity plates are listed in kgs)


It does get confusing!
Building supplies are still sold in imperial
Studs in walls are still on 16' centers.

Tires are the most bizarre 215/75R15
215 is the tread width in mm
75 is the height of the sidewall as a percentage of the tread width
15 is the rim diameter in inches

The longer the rest of the world holds onto the archaic imperial system the more muddled it all becomes.

I say petition your governments to change now!


sam

In the UK any tape measure has both inches and cm on it.

But living in France the world is metric only.

To confuse the issue there is always the old French pouce (inch) that is 2.71cm different to the imperial inch of 2.54

Then there is the Swedish mile?

It's a wonder people can communicate at all!

Swedish mil = 10km (It only exist in swedes mind, not on signs)(luckily)

63,360 inches in a mile (thank God for the internet!), that's imperial inches. When I was in Germany last dec I happened to be looking at some real estate listings for shits-n-giggles and houses and apt were listed in square meters. In the states it square feet.

Cooking measurements are even more confusing, fluid ounces vs dry ounces, teaspoons, tablespoons, 1/8 cup... etc. Crazy!

So is the Swedish mile like a country mile?

skidesmond wrote:
So is the Swedish mile like a country mile?

It's a distance meassure between cities so to speak. We only use when we tell each other how far it is to another town or how long Sweden is! So instead of saying 1572 km we say 157 mil. We are polite so we don't use it when we talk to foreigners, so no worries.
Sweden in numbers:
Long:
157 mil
1572 km
1572000 m
15720000 dm
157200000 cm
1572000000 mm

Wide:
50 mil
500 km
....

Area:
449 964 km²
And suddenly no mil² !!

We are +9 million habitants.
Which give us 22 habitants per km²

k => kilo => means thousand (1000)

My new skis are:
0,000186 mil (not really accurate)
0,00186 km (not really accurate)
1,86 m
18,6 dm
186 cm
1860 mm
So if I produced a little less than a million skis i could lay them from north to south of Sweden.

I'm not sure what a country mile is?

Here is the SI system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... m_of_Units
Look at the map a bit down in the article. You (USA) are pretty alone, with Burma and Liberia!... Any day now, or...?

that reminds me. i wanna live in Sweden someday!

You're welcome! But don't expect any good skiing. We go the other way

I see a business opportunity here...

OAC wrote:I see a business opportunity here...

Speaking of business opportunity... A local guy developed a new type of tape measure. Unfortunately it's not metric. But clever none the less.

Local story, http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/11/29/measure-man

http://www.m1tapes.com/