Well, "the whole nine yards" is about cloth, so I guess it fits the two
known items. :-)
As for things being in SI and not US, but labeled as US, yes, I too am
seeing that. If you buy washers (for bolts) at the big box stores, they
have larger holes than the ones at the true hardware store. And, they
look to actually be metric when you measure them. Also, plywood seems to
be a bit "off" on the thickness too. The router bits I used to use to
make glue-up dado slots (with plywood going into the slot) are a little
off now.
Tony Thigpen
Jeremy Nicoll wrote on 7/21/20 2:29 PM:
On Tue, 21 Jul 2020, at 17:00, Tony Thigpen wrote:
It's all perspective and how precise you need to be. And what we are
measuring.
The only thing I know that is measured in yards is cloth and football.
What about "the whole nine yards"?
In home improvements, boards and such are measured in feet,inch,16ths.
That is it. Not yards,feet,inch,16th.
In the UK, stuff is now labelled in cm or mm, but actual sizes of many
things haven't changed. And timber sizes are often nominal anyway,
eg the size of something before it was planed or sawn.
What used to be an 8 foot by 2 foot board is typically now sold as
2400x600.
When driving down the road, it's all miles or 1/10 of a mile. We don't
say Mile,yard,feet,inch,16th.
On motorways etc the countdown markers to where a slip-road starts
were supposedly at 100 yard intervals. A quick google suggests they
are "at about 100 yard/metre" intervals now, so goodness knows
what the actual distances are. But it hardly matters for the purpose
of seeing one's approaching the start of the slip.
And incidentally both 1/16 and 1/32 were easy to work with (eg in DIY
with timber) being, if you like just a bit more and just a bit less than 1
mm.
On the other hand if you were machining metal you'd likely have been
working in "thou" ie thousandths of an inch. Apparently USAians call
that a "mil" - which must be easily confused with millimetre.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousandth_of_an_inch
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