Fathoms, Feet or Metres?

[jordanbasset]

Surprised me that two by four piece of wood was actually around 1 1/2" x 3 1/2"

 

[reginaldon]

Surprised me that two by four piece of wood was actually around 1 1/2" x 3 1/2"

So many use 4X2 timber all the timein this metric age

 

[Lakesailor]

I think you are all making my point for me

 

[maxi77]

Last time I did any plumbing (which was not that long ago) they were still called 3/4. Although officially that's not an actual dimension, it's a "size number".

Makes sense though, because they never were actually 3/4" in any direction. The 3/4" refers to the inner diameter of a black iron pipe whose outside would be threaded with that pipe thread by an Edwardian gas fitter. You won't get anywhere trying to identify BSP fittings by simply measuring them.

Pete

I think he was refering to compression/solder fittings where you do use the external diameter of the pipe and whils 15mm and 1/2 are for practical purposes the same 19mm and 3/4 are not and whils you can use the same compession fitting you need the correct olive and the correct solder fitting. You can get BSP fittings in much of Europe but they tend to have local names, in froggy land they are called GAZ.

 

[maxi77]

Surprised me that two by four piece of wood was actually around 1 1/2" x 3 1/2"

Ah, was thar PSE or sawn. Finished wood was always named for the size of wood used to feed the finishing machine thas 4x2 PSE was much the size you found the missing 1/2 inch having been removed in the finishing machine.

 

[Koeketiene]

It's always been a source of wonderment to me that German engineers manage to make anything work, hobbled as they are by a useless system of measurement.

 

[Grumpybear]

my last boat, a French Jeanneau Sundream 28 (feet, that is) had a fuel tank which was a cube exactly 305mm on each edge. A real metric cubic foot.

 

[Mariner69]

Just to help. Two thousand yards in a tactical mile....

 

[photodog]

the last time I was out, I was told to pass "about a cable" off the headland.....

I like to use Cable as often as possible on the boat...

My proudest moment was coming back from Salcombe a few years ago in the fog and I had a chat with Brixham CG on the radio and they asked what the vis was like and I was able to report it was "Under a Cable"....


Ahh.... Salty Days!

 

[[70521]]

Does anyone still use fathoms?

I went metric years ago.

 

[trapezeartist]

Let's give up on this SI metric feat and inches stuff. Go back to furlongs, firkins and fortnights. That'll confuse the bloody French.

They're fundamental units that you can derive an other quantity from. For instance, acceleration is in furlongs per square fortnight.

 

[nigelmercier]

They still use feet, inches and fathoms in the USA, as well as pints, gallons and pounds (although these are different from the UK ones).

But then a lot of them also believe they have an imaginary friend in the sky ...

 

[Sybarite]

I was chatting to a sailing friend last night and we alighted on the topic of depth readings. Some depth sounders have abandoned fathoms and now just give feet and metres as a display option. Is it time to dump fathoms altogether? Does anyone still use fathoms? What do you think?

This question wouldn't be asked if Britain played its full part in the European Union!

 

[Yacht Breeze]

This question wouldn't be asked if Britain played its full part in the European Union!

Oh, you mean like signing up to the Eurozone?

Now that would have been a smart move.

 

[stevebrassett]

My boat is 23 feet long and draws 0.8 metre.

 

[angelsson]

I have worked in metric most of my working life, but small dimensions of say under 150mm. I find working with depths in metres difficult to visualise, we had a draught of around 7ft (easy to visualise). So with 2.13m draught (7ft) a depth of 8ft is just OK (2.44m) but trying to visualise 2.44-2.13 = 0.11 clearance is not so intuitive.

So our depthsounders were and are set to read in feet and our electronic charts set to show depths in feet.

More than half my life was in feet and inches, I still visualise everything in imperial, likewise a fathom, 6 feet.
My instruments show in feet, a choice the instrument gives me, easy to work in, for me anyway, and I am I correct in assuming the UK official units of measurement is still Imperial, despite what schools now teach.

 

[Greenheart]

All jolly amusing, I'm sure. Elders humorously enjoy their effortless, drummed-in comprehension of a not-very-logical, not-very-simple, wholly unintuitive assortment of units of measurement. Some of us can translate accurately to metric; most are unable.

What seems to me to be an unassailable benefit in the metric system, is the ease by which one can translate volume of space in cubic decimetres, to exactly the same number of liquid litres, and one will know instantly that that amount will weigh the same number of kilos.

I was abjectly dreadful at all mathematics in my teens.

But as soon as I was shown (not by the school system, damn it!) that each cubic meter of water is a thousand cubic decimeters (10x10x10 cubes, each of 10cmx10cm), and that each of those is one litre, and that each litre weighs one kilo...

...suddenly I was completely able to judge volumes and weights and all manner of what were once unrelated factors seen in abstract; abstruse and hard to grasp.

I haven't met one schoolkid of any age, who has been taught this elementary relationship between the space, weight and liquid quantity of water. I call that an outrageous omission by the school system.

Metric is fantastic. The reason we don't all agree on that, is because we weren't shown it properly.

PS, I always think in knots, and boat lengths in feet. But can you imagine the unnecessary complexity of calculating how many gallons would flood a specified cubic footage of bilge, and then judging how many pounds of additional displacement that is?

 

[donaldson]

And it's still, for me, a 25 on the rugby pitch.

 

[Sybarite]

Oh, you mean like signing up to the Eurozone?

Now that would have been a smart move.

Actually yes it would have been : critical mass and all that.

 

[DanTribe]

We do seem to relish keeping a hotch-potch of random measurements in this realm.
We often refer to our vehicles consumption in Miles Per Gallon, but how long is it since we could buy a gallon of fuel.

I seem to recall that Parkstone Quay ferry terminal got into trouble for having a sign telling foreign drivers distances in kilometres, apparently that is illegal.

Do farmers work in Hectares or acres, definitely hectares on the Archers.

I was at college in 1967 and we were taught to work in SI Units and told that the whole country would go metric in 1969. Still waiting over 40 years later.