this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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M'erican here. My workshop is 100% metric. I do far too much measuring, designing and planning to fuck around with inches, feet and football fields. Motherfuck the imperial system. America has been robbed of the superior until of measurement. Every last bit of my work is in millimeters and it will be that way until I die in a horrible firey accident in my shop because beer and dangerous power tools are just too much fun when taken together.
The only thing I will hand to the imperial system is how it uses inches. Then again that's really a part of the system but of its practical use.
What I like is the use of parts of inches. Especially the fractions which are powers of two. Very useful. That's a little difficult with the cm and mm because they're already so small. And a dm is quite large on the other hand.
I know my uncle uses inches to make flutes e.g. Supposedly helps with getting things lined up and accurate to tune. I dunno. But yeah. Otherwise, metric ftw.
What? With millimeters you barely have to use fractions because it is so small, how is that a negative? Fractions are also way harder to understand if you need to het precise
You've already gotten two real world uses here.
I'm not saying millimeters are a negative. Never did I say that. But I will say a base 10 doesn't have that many prime factors, so using measurement equipment where halves and thirds and smaller marked out can be pretty helpful. Metric measuring stuff never has that.
I'm just saying that if you are working with some kind of base size, and want to do stuff in fractions or multiple of that base size, the inch is a pretty good size. 👍
I'm from and in Europe, and I don't use inches myself. But there are obviously good uses for it.
I have a hard time understanding why you would prefer that over using decimal places to be honest, adding decimal places together is much simpler than different fractions
That's just because you have less practice with the latter. 👍 There are tricks. 😉
Not gonna lie, if you are working with carpentry or sewing or similar construction or creative work, you probably shouldn't have any issues with fractions...
Just try adding 1/3 and 5/8. In my field fractions like that are nowhere near precise enough anyways, so you'd need to work with thousands of inches, which just makes you wish there was a smaller unit like millimeters
Cherry-picking fractions with prime numbers. 👍 Obviously no harder than using a readily available calculator just like any engineer would with the metric system. That's fine too. You'd end up with a decimal answer, so then the benefit is lost, just as with fractions of cm.
Yup, say no more. I'm not saying inches are universally better. Only in certain situations.
I don't see how cherry picking is an issue when that issue literally can't happen when you're working with fractions, I also don't think those sizes are particularly uncommon?
Not flute working but sewing, and I know it sounds insane, but mm is just to small to be practical. It's one or two strands of tread whereas 1/4 or even 1/8 gives a proper piece to cut of.
And 1/4 inch seem allowance is just so much less bulky than the standard 0,75 cm, and so much more intuitive for me to work with .... and f. I just realized that all my arguments for using inches are based on habits..
Even though I'm european I never really applied cm in anything but homework and therefore never got a real sense of it. And a lot of the nice sewing patterns are in inches so that's where i started.
Well habits are valid and in the end a cm is just as arbitrary as an inch, but converting between units is just objectively easier with metric