My limited experience of buying wood in the UK has been weird so far. The width and thickness is in inches and the length in meters. The nominal size in mm is given for the width and thickness is provided in mm in brackets.
2" x 2" (47 x 50) x 2.4m for example... As an engineer where only millimetres are used up to something like 3 meters and centimeters are not a real measurement it's been hard to adjust.
I don't yet know how it's going to work out for me in woodworking, most of my tools have imperial and metric scale.
For my shed build the outside dimensions are in feet because for whatever reason when talking sheds it means more to me. But undoubtedly when measuring for pieces that fit inside those dimensions I'll default to millimetres...
I have to work in cubic metres in the woodland. I can take five cubic metres in any 12 week period without requiring a felling license. Trees to cubic metres. Odd. I wonder why we did the cubic thing? Was there a period in time where people glued everything into cubes for shipping? Was this the cubist period?
Definitely a cubist thing. They used to ship lots of timber from Norway, and they only used square-rigged ships. It makes sense the more you think about it.
My limited experience of buying wood in the UK has been weird so far. The width and thickness is in inches and the length in meters. The nominal size in mm is given for the width and thickness is provided in mm in brackets.
2" x 2" (47 x 50) x 2.4m for example... As an engineer where only millimetres are used up to something like 3 meters and centimeters are not a real measurement it's been hard to adjust.
I don't yet know how it's going to work out for me in woodworking, most of my tools have imperial and metric scale.
For my shed build the outside dimensions are in feet because for whatever reason when talking sheds it means more to me. But undoubtedly when measuring for pieces that fit inside those dimensions I'll default to millimetres...
Hehe! That sounds familiar :-)
I have to work in cubic metres in the woodland. I can take five cubic metres in any 12 week period without requiring a felling license. Trees to cubic metres. Odd. I wonder why we did the cubic thing? Was there a period in time where people glued everything into cubes for shipping? Was this the cubist period?
Definitely a cubist thing. They used to ship lots of timber from Norway, and they only used square-rigged ships. It makes sense the more you think about it.