I like metric for designing small, accurate parts (eg, for a 3D printer) but even for smaller woodworking projects (where I rarely need to be more accurate than ⅛") I prefer imperial. If you're no good at fractions, you can always treat your inches like metric units: calculating multiples of 0.75" is just as hard as calculating 18mm, so long as you know how to move a decimal place. But imperial has the nice feature that you can *also* work in fractions, and if you're good at it, this can be quite nice. Calculating multiples of ¾" is much nicer than multiples of 0.75" or 18mm. But one thing that Vancouver Carpenter didn't mention is that we don't tend to use inches and feet on the jobsite. Not together, anyway. The thing that makes imperial complicated is that it has multiple units: inches, feet, miles, etc. So we mostly just stick to one unit: inches. Studs are 16" on centre, not 1'4". My kitchen ceiling is 89½" tall, not 7'5½" tall. When you stick to one unit, it's basically the same as working with metric numbers. The only time we typically use feet on a jobsite is if it's raw materials that are exact foot measures (eg, a 4x8 sheet of drywall), or if it's a rough estimate (my old apartment had 11' ceilings). If you're hearing feet on a jobsite, it's probably a whole number of feet, not a mix of feet and inches. If I could go back in time and tell the French how to design the metric system, I'd give them two pieces of advice: Rather than basing the meter off of an incorrect measurement of the circumference of the Earth, just base it off of inches to make it backwards compatible (under that system, the distance from Toronto to Whitehorse would be 222 mega inches) and change our numbering system to dozenal, so we get the benefits of fractions together with the benefits of easily moving decimal places.

@@RickYorgason Well I'm european and I can tell you metric system also has multiple units. length= kilometer, hectometer, decameter, meter, decimeter, centimeter and millimeter. Each of them multiplies by 10 the unit that follows. The same for weight, surface, capacity or volume although in the case of the surface the multiplication is by 100 (square meters) or by 1000 (volume in cubic meters)

@@pedrofmc0000 I'm Canadian. I understand the metric system. We're pretty bi-lingual here when it comes to measurement systems. We do the exact same thing when we use metric in construction: we never use meters. Plans are always in mm. Also, engineers have metricized the imperial system: thousands of an inch are common. There's not really any reason the metric system could have used at least one conventional measurement instead of starting everything from scratch.

@@RickYorgason Oh! OK I'm sorry excuse me please.

@@RickYorgason agreed. it seems that for countries where building materials are already made using whole numbers in imperial, decimal-izing inches is a better improvement than starting from scratch.

That absolutely is madness. Unfortunate.

Y'all need to get your shit together then hahahah

@@TheTechGuider The British? Never! They will always do everything the other way around ...

For that mess a spaceship crashed on Mars.

Why are you matching the framing to the drywall instead of the sheathing? The drywaller is going to have to cut every sheet anyways. Your walls hardly ever fall on layout, and even exterior walls have to be cut to account for the thickness of the walls. The only exception is the odd very large room on the ceiling.

2 by 4 = 3 syllables, 4 characters 45 by 90 = 5 syllables. 6 characters In construction, what exactly is gained by doing things in metric, besides all the extra syllables and characters?

What is gained is is the lack of balls ups .no fractions . Multiple of tens heaps easier.

@@Dev-lc4cd This is the strangest argument I've heard yet... "three mil" "one thirty-second of an inch" What's gained is that it's a consistent, proportion measurement system that works in base-ten format like our entire modern maths system. Nothing needs to be memorised, no odd conversions and fractions need to be known. If you can count, then you can measure. 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm 1/32", 3/64", 1/16", 5/64", 1/8"

@@khdownes1 Something that small is usually called a "hair" of some sort. LOL

@@jhalleck I prefer my measurements in "whiskers" or "bee's dicks" haha

Learn your fractions ya bums.

That's fine, but I'm a contractor and I do small renos too, getting materials is much better in Imperial currently. We use very standard lengths of material, and almost any house I reno is going to have studs laid out on 16 inch centres.

Cinder blocks are 8x8x16” nominal, which is the actual size plus the width of one mortar joint. Suppose the finished height of a cinder block were 20 cm, which is 3.2 mm shorter than 8”. Would you think that was a problem if you had to repair a damaged block wall? Or even build a new wall that connected to an old wall?

I remember the teachers in my school would always say they wished we would convert to the metric system in the United States. The rest of the world uses the metric system.

@@Eger118877 That's because teachers don't measure anything for a living. Anything "mission critical" we already do in metric.

Thank you!

The funny thing about this is that you still use decimals rather than fractions, so you guys are kind of a "hybrid". :D

@@dienekes4364 Seems that way, but "metric" and "decimal" are two different things. Engineers and machinists have been using decimal or "engineering" inches since the 1850s, well before the metric system gained widespread acceptance. Interestingly, when Thomas Jefferson was George Washington's Secretary of State in the 1790s, he pushed for the adoption of the metric system. To me the funny thing is that if Jefferson had gotten his way, the US could have been the first nation to adopt the Metric System instead of the last.

@@christopherdahle9985 Yes, I'm aware of that.

@@christopherdahle9985 _"but "metric" and "decimal" are two different things"_ -- I didn't say they were. I said they were both used in decimal format. That's the extent of my post. But thanks for assuming I was too ignorant to understand the difference.

@@dienekes4364 Actually I assumed you had more knowledge than the average bear. I just thought you might be interested to know that at the same time we were decimalizing our currency in the 1790s, the US nearly did adopt the metric system, and it might have happened except that the ship which was delivering a set of calibrated standards to Thomas Jefferson was attacked by pirates. The metric standards went down with the ship.

Same in australia

The inch was the length of the king's big toe or 3 kernels of corn laid end to end.

When you have a notation that works, why would you change it?

But you're not weird. You are using metric because you are often using metric materials. That's just pragmatic. But I shouldn't sell you short. Maybe you are delightfully weird in other ways😂

Yeah we all gotta use metric for tile in Canada because of materials and Italian equipment!

Masterpiuma?

I don't understand how you stand using a combination tape. Don't you use both sides of a tape?

@@304spencer I never use combo tapes

There shouldn't be any other way to say it!!!!

Actually you dont need to go that far few years back a canadian flight ran out of fuel and crash landed the reason was changing the fuel tanks to metric and the pilot thought he had that volume in imperial

@@fahmywaleed the "Gimli Glider"... interesting story... though it was nearly 40 years ago...

Not entirely getting this concept. There is no need to even attempt base 16 or 32 with metric because something that measures 108mm is just exactly that: 10cm and 8mm and with exact precision. You wouldn't call it 10cm and 8/10mm you just say 108. With imperial you are forced to fraction to get the same measurement (4 1/4 here) because you just wouldn't call something 17/4's or am I missing what you're saying?

How do you really divide a 4" length into 3 equal parts? Your base of 12 only helps to divide feet into inches, it doesn't help to divide inches. Besides, it all depends on the measurements of the materials. There's a reason why sheet goods here are mostly 6, 12, 18 or 24 mm (18 being the most common, similar to 3/4"). It's just easy to work with these numbers.

​@@NickRgibbs Ok, first sorry for not being clear, that’s on me not you. There really is two things mixed in my earlier post. For inches and up there is a benefit to it being a base 12 system. So, for that, a person can divide the whole units into halfs, quarters, thirds, sixths, and twelfths. In base 10 one is limited to halfs, fifths, or tenths. This has a benefit when one is in a position to do this in your head vs with a calculator and maintain accuracy. You just have a few more commonly needed options while keeping things exact. When one is working with measurements below the inch it would be great if it was also base 12 for computational reasons but for practical/historical reasons it is based on the concept of progressively halving the measurement. A process that is relatively simple to do in the physical world… it just unfortunately throws a wrench in the works when doing the math. In reality the best possible case would probably have been if while adopting the metric system the French would have kept the base 12 system and incorporated that with all the other very logical and systematic parts of the metric system. Something that was a very real possibility. If you think that there is no way the SI system could be anything other than base 10 I would encourage you to go watch Numberphile and their “Base12” video on KZfaq. You have to hang in to the ~7min mark though.

@@sanderd17 You are not wrong... I should not have thrown in the 16 and 32 in the early post as you are correct that it is not the ability to subdivide those... see my other response to Nick that hopefully clarifies what I was intending....

​@@davidruss7702 You have a valid point and it makes more sense having had it explained. I have either seen that video before or watched another video of base number systems because this wasn't completely new when I watched it now. I agree that a small measurement benefits from being easily split into multiple fractions rather than base 10 which can only be halved or fifth-ed easily. I do think though that industries that use the metric system have just moved their "standard size" to be more accommodating to such fractions. BTW I'm Canadian and work in Canada using the SI system for everything other than baking and construction. I like the precision of it but when I am forced to use SI at work I'm just not used to it and am constantly converting things. And my cousin is an electrician (mostly commercial) and uses SI for everything. I was helping him do some DIY work and while I loved the accuracy of the SI measurement, it doesn't help if you cut something a full 1m short because you aren't used to the tape measure.

I think you forgot the part about (aboot) the beaver being a truly proud and noble animal, a toque is a hat, and a chesterfield is a couch. I moved to the US 7 years ago, and also still use km/h for speed and Celsius for temperature, but I never did have a good fundamental idea of what a kg was, vs a pound. I could more easily visualize and mentally multiply a pound of butter. Most of the people I work with are from metric countries as well, and they're always slightly amused but slightly confused when they actually know what temperature I'm talking about (as I guess they usually assume I'm American not Canadian). I'm beginning to get into machining as a hobby, and I'm torn whether I should be measuring in thousandths or tenths (of thousandths) of an inch, or microns...

yeah, I have been thinking about this, not for precision though. I normally cut trim to the 32nd, (builder grade trash). but I find it time consuming and occasionally, causing errors, to write out so many fractions on a small cut list, and I find when I have to scratch out and rewrite a number (because I am a carpenter, not a secretary), I have trouble reading what I have wrote, now it's much smaller and no longer on the line. Also, I am thinking about moving to a tablet for cut lists (as my laser tape is bluetooth), and that would make writing in fractions inconvenient, for distances that my laser tape can't capture. but... my laser tape could just output in mm. I could measure in mm. I could enter numbers on my tablet or my phone in mm. I could add or subtract all the numbers I need in a systematic way for headers in mm (using excel and fill column). Gotta figure out how to do it without my boss finding out though, because I expect some screwups while learning :D

@@timmietimmins3780 100% dude switch to mm for that. I don’t think you will encounter as many screwups as you think. In fact I think you will instantly have a reduction in screwups due to fraction mistakes. It’s so much simpler than imperial!

@@conradcoolerfiend once you are used to working with the fractions you don't even think about it. Depends what you are used to.

@@chrisburns5691 read the other guys comment. For those types of things , mm is objectively better.

@@conradcoolerfiend i disagree. I'm a carpenter and do finishing work all the time. No issues. I've tried a metric tape and didn't care for it.

Then she laughs because Canadians are polite.

@@nimrodery :D

If only we were part of the US.

It's not "more accurate" so much as "easier and quicker to be more accurate" since metric users tend to be accustomed to very small units like millimeters, milliliters, and milligrams versus imperial users.

Easier to do math accurately and/or with old computers

it's not more accurate. fractions are used when "accuracy" is not needed. when it is, in the US, we use the decimal imperial system. They are all just made up things that we have agreed on. The advantage to those who use/learn the imperial system is the better understanding of factions (for average person).

@@Ramdodge582 You do realize that fractions and decimal numbers are exactly the same thing, right? 1/2 = 0.5, 1/4 = 0.25, 1/8 = 0.125. Both are accurate representations of values greater than 0 but less than 1.

@@aaron74 no I didn't know that, that's weird.. Seriously dude, no one is using fractions for 0.0002"

Never been in a machine shop eh?

Mr. Dan, There was a reply here referring to the use of decimal inches in machine shops and I started to respond that decimal inches to the nearest thou in an original design are quite different from "decimalized inches" which come from a plan converted from metric to imperial. If a thing is designed to metric measurements, it's much easier to fabricate in metric even if you are used to Imperial. For example if a wooden panel is supposed to be 325 x 750 x 25 mm, I would not ever try to convert that to 13.77952755905512 x 29.52755905511811 x 0.984251968503937 inches. Instead, I'd either mark out the piece with a metric rule, or I'd redesign the entire project to work out to common fractions of inches. After 45 years bouncing from the trades to math and science education, and now as an instructor in the trades I can pretty fluidly work in inches, fractional inches, decimal inches, or metric units, but I agree that there is a special circle in hell for anyone who decimalizes metric plans, and they are doomed to spend that eternity with the people who metricize imperial plans.

As a Machinist I'd much rather see thou than 1/128ths

@@geoffflato6065 Does that even happen? I mean, does any machinist or engineer anywhere ever use non-decimal fractional units. I'm no machinist at all, but I've never seen a non-decimal fractional scale on a machine tool and I can't imagine trying to mill some part to some fraction like "63/512." How would you even try to set that up on a mill? In building houses and commercial structures, I've rarely seen a blue print with measures called out to anything smaller than an 8th, and any woodworking plan that specifed a dimension closer than 1/32 would be crazy. My calipers can measure in decimals to the nearest 0.0005, but they won't read fractions past a 64th

@@carlip Sure looks like it. LOL

The fastener hardware looked to be laid out in inches.

I would like to know what the standard size is for a sheet of plywood in Australia and what numbers you use when laying out studs on centers. I'm totally guessing that what we call a 4x8 sheet would be 1200 x 2400, and that you'd lay out studs on 400 or 600 mm centers (close to 16" or 24" center to center). I've looked in vain for a metric tapemeasure in the US laid out solely in metric units and including the standard sorts of markings we see in the US to help with layout.

Ninety Forty is good! And everything in simple 5s and 10s is good. That common sense would catch on.

@@christopherdahle9985 its indeed 1200 x 2400 with 600 cc. Think they also sell 900x2400 and in that case it is 450 cc

@@scania9786 Thank you for the interesting and useful information. 900mm is close to 5 feet, so I suppose that is why high quality European sheet good such as Baltic Birch ply, and Valchromat MDF (if you can find it at all) are sold in the US in 5' x 5' sheets. It still troubles me that I can't find a purely metric tape measure anywhere in the US, only ones with Imperial measurements where they have added a metric scale to one edge, making them awkward for accurate use if you have to measure and mark on the "other edge". "Officially" the US HAS adopted the metric system, and some things are absolutely required to be marketed in metric units (two liter soda bottles, etc) But as a practical matter, industry just labels most things in both units. Again, the metric units appear as an afterthought. At one time I thought the gasoline (petrol) industry would start selling fuel by the liter as a way to disguise rising prices. And that would be a pretty easy change to make... a couple of changes to the software that controls the electronic pumps. But it hasn't happened. Cheers!

That's why the 64th exists. lol

Metric is what Decimal Imperial measurement systems are trying to be. You can find centres using metric just as easily.

@@flboy77 Why I use a vernier caliper. 😂

@@jhalleck 🤣

600x 1200 ceiling grid fits standard lights .

@@robert_wylie How?

just convert to all 32nds - (11/16 * 2/2 => 22/32) + 3/32 + (3/4 * 8/8 => 24/32) = 49/32. I'll admit I had to stop and think about the 3/4 to 24/32, but once you put everything in 32ndths, it's just as easy as adding mms together. If your unit is going to be 32ndths, then keep it all consistent and don't use mixed denominators in your fractions.

This is the way. Learn both, use both and stop whining on the internet about it.

As a now Canadian retired electrician who worked my entire apprenticeship and a bit in Imperial. From house building to hi-rise to cabinets and furniture changed to metric SI. All drawings were in metric. Within a few weeks to months, carpenters, plumbers, sheet metal, electricians, draftsmen and designers would tell they would never go back to Imperial. I don't care what off the shelf materials dimensions are, you are breaking down materials. Measure and cut in metric, so much easier.

No, we are not. Everybody knows that “2x4” is a nominal size, not an actual size. The actual size was standardized about a hundred years ago, when lumber sizes varied by region. The 2x4 is a structural component. The optimal size is one which makes it strong enough for its intended purpose, but not so much stronger than necessary so as to be a waste of material. Wood frame construction is a mature art, and if established conventions are followed, you can expect that the structure will be sound. That is what you want from a building material. It is advantageous that the dimensions be standardized, but there is no value at all to having the dimensions be whole inches.

Agree, my cnc machines and 3d printers were designed and calibrated in metric. Especially on the 3d printers, weird things happen with layer height and wall thickness if I make the machine try to approximate imperial measurements. So I use metric units for anything designed for those machines. But if I am designing a kitchen or a dining table, I use imperial units in Sketchup.

In the states, most sheet goods are 48 x 96 inches (4 x8 feet) but we can get MDF and some other things in 49x97. I can't speak to why, but my theory is that having that extra is good if your shop has a big CNC router table. Just a little bit extra in case the edges get dinged up or the sheet gets put in crooked. To my knowledge, all those size of materials are also available in plain 4x8 sheets

@@thefack149 thank you for replying.

That’s odd, because the US blocks of nominal 16” length are 15.625” which is 397 mm. That size is suppose to result in 16” spacing with the joint. Even if your blocks were 3 mm longer, They could still be set at 16” spacing with a slightly thinner joint.

@@GH-oi2jf In the US, CMU blocks are nominally 16 in (410 mm) long and 8 in (200 mm) wide. Their actual dimensions are 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) less than the nominal dimensions (to allow for 3⁄8-inch mortar joints between blocks in any orientation).[7] In Ireland and the UK, blocks are usually 440 mm × 215 mm × 100 mm (17.3 in × 8.5 in × 3.9 in) excluding mortar joints. In Australia, New Zealand and Canada, blocks are usually 390 mm × 190 mm × 190 mm (15.4 in × 7.5 in × 7.5 in) excluding mortar joints.

Why do conversions? Measure and cut in metric.

Here in the UK old building are also built in imperial but new material is sold in metric. It can be a bit awkward. They sell metric to imperial adaptors for fixing to old pipe work and sewage systems.

But you managed it, right? On so many videos you see commenters asking for the measurements in metric when they could just convert the measurements themselves. It's crazy. I grew up in the UK so both are second nature.

@@PJBonoVox yes for sure. My work involves me working with products with metric and imperial units so it's not a huge effort. Way more used to imperial for framing and other construction though.

🤣Freedom Units!!!

Cool thing about metric is that most of the material AND designs is made to multiplies of 200 or 300 mm.

@@joansparky4439 Both systems have easy mathematical shortcuts.

I've been looking for an easy way to halve something like 7 5/8. This is a multistep process for me and drives me nuts. I end up converting to decimals and then back to fractions.

@@RB-hj7qc Since half of 7 is 3 and half, I start with the 5/8th part... 5/16th is half of that, plus 8/16ths for the half from the 3 and...results in 3 13/16th. In other words, it's easiest for me to start with the fraction as that gives you the denominator, so getting half of those streamlines the process. Let's get more complicated with this two digit odd number my SO will now give me, 67 3/4, 3/8ths and 4/8ths is 7/8ths, so 33 7/8ths is half. Half of that is 16 15/16. Half of that is 8 15/32. Half that is ridiculous for my work!

@@RJFerret OMG, that makes my head explode. lol

That's a great analogy, imperial is my native language but I can speak metric. I'm totally going to start saying that.

Bar fractions are easier to divide into a standalone fraction, but harder to add, subtract, divide, multiply, and overall integrate with other fractions-it's harder to immediately know whether 9∕32in. is bigger or smaller than 1∕4in. and to add them, but immediately easy to tell that 280 ⁠mm is bigger than 250 ⁠mm and add them up. Feet and inches are only easier for _you_ to visualize because you're more accustomed to them; in most countries, it's the opposite because everyone uses metric near-exclusively.

ouch, we used to laugh at a kid in school who claimed to be 5' 12", I'm sure that was wrong but it was funny

for some reason drywallers do that as a system. Not sure why. I know I prefer imperial, just used to it.

That is not accurate. the Saturn V rocket, and earlier US rockets, were engineered in US Customary units (inches). Werner von Braun complained about it, but it wasn’t until the US started doing space projects with international partners that the engineering was done in Metric units. The flight control software used metric units, but values were converted to Customary for display to the astronauts and for public consumption.

Twelve isn’t that weird or arbitrary. Our clock, degrees of a circle, and calendar months are 12. Base twelve is from the Babylonians (I’m pretty sure) who would count their finger knuckles (3 per finger, times 4 fingers = 12) using their thumb as a pointer. Then with the other hand you can indicate how many “twelves” you have counted, so 1 finger is 12, 2 is 24… all the way up to 60. I’m not sure I’m explaining it super well but Google counting to 12 with finger knuckles.

You just said Australian framing is sized in simpler metric numbers like 45 x 90. It's easier to cope with metric when many materials come sized to the nearest 5 or 10. That's not the situation with many materials in Canada.

In Canada they are most definitely sold as 38 X 89, and are listed as such in our building codes.

@@rozinant1237 Presumably because they are converting timber already cut to imperial measurements. In metric countries the timber is cut to metric measurements like 45 x 90 not 38 x 89 or whatever. It must be a bit of a pain for Canadians having to deal with a split system....maybe a bit like using French or English language depending on where you live.

I think you are misunderstanding. There is nothing to convert. Almost all residential buildings in Canada are built to imperial measurements because as was stated, we export about 70% of our softwood lumber products to the USA. A 2x4 ( it’s nominal dimension) has an actual dimension of 1.5” x 3.5” (which on a “hard” conversion equates to 38 x 89). Carpenters working in Canada simply measure 1.5” when they are locating a stud.

Why do people imagine that a decimal based system makes them smarter? Kids, you are back to counting on your fingers. Our carpenter is using way more of his brain but also using a system that makes his job easier.

@@atrifle8364 I think having an argument about which system is meant to be better is kind of redundant at this point. I just want to point out that the reason a lot of people who are used to empirical seem to think metric is confusing is only because they're treating metric as a conversion from empirical, instead of just seeing it as it's own thing. It's like if I tried to speak a English by forming a sentence in Italian, then translating each of those words to English in my head. Instead of just... speaking and thinking in English...

You said empirical 4 times in your comment - it's imperial. Starts with an "I" and there's no "c".

@@zapadeeboom Yeah my bad. I get the pronunciation confused all the time because both terms relate to data/observation/measurement

1/16+1/32=3/32 done in my head. 1/16=2/32, 2/32+1/32=3/32. That said I make both sides mad. I use both in the US. Also, 1/32 in MM is like .8 MM in home construction we are not getting that close, you are not doing it the military way. Measure with a micrometer, mark with a crayon and cut with an axe.

@@marinefoxalpha4499 You never worked in construction, not even a DIY job, if

@@juzoli I don't understand what do you mean? How do you know what I do a living? The right way of saying it is "Have you ever worked in construction?" The answer is yes. Have a good day, was not trying to make you mad, if you took it that way. Fat Max tapes in the field don't have 1/32 that it.

@@marinefoxalpha4499 My assumption is based on that you didn’t have a real life example… You brought an unrealistic, oversimplified example which never happens in construction. And of course it works fine in very simple examples.

You could use an engineer’s scale of feet, tenths, and hundredths. One hundredth is about 1/8 inch. For finer work, you can measure in inches, tenths, and hundredths, which is about as fine as you can read a rule.