Items for sale with "imperial" dimensions

But a USA pint is only about 83% of an imperial pint! Unless of course you mean a US dry pint which is different again. Mixing them up is bound to help your cake rise.

A litre is a litre anywhere in the world and when measuring anything.

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How about 3" x 2" or 3" x 3" timber?

There is a saying ‘hit you over the heat with a piece of 2 x (be) 4’…doesn’t quite sound the same when you say '‘I’ll hit you over the heat with a piece of 50mm x 100mm’.

Old habit dies hard.

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Au contrarie. A litre is a liter in one place :smiley: :smiley: [quote=“phbriggs2000, post:26, topic:15276”]
How about 3" x 2" or 3" x 3" timber?..piece of 2 x (be) 4
[/quote]
The softwood is not actually ‘that size’.:open_mouth:

How about truth in sizes. It is not just about clothing :wink:

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Heheh Yep but I still hold to the 8 quarts

1 imperial peck = ​1⁄4 of an imperial bushel
= 2 imperial gallons
= 8 imperial quarts
= 16 imperial pints
= 320 imperial fluid ounces
= 9.09218 litres
≈ 554.839 cubic inches
≈ 2.06411 US dry gallons

But my Cubic inches were out

US of course hold a slightly different measure

1 US peck = ​1⁄4 of a US bushel
= 2 US dry gallons
= 8 US dry quarts
= 16 US dry pints
= 537.605 cubic inches
= 8.80976754172 litres
≈ 1.93788 imperial gallons
≈ 310.060 imperial fluid ounces

So slightly less than imperial

No apology was needed Phil. My Cubic Inches were so far out I do deserve some good kicking up the behind :smile:

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3x3 is replaced with 75mm x 75mm…a standard square width, along with 4 x 4 (100mm x 100mm). These sizes are available in hard and softwoods. Not sure where the 89 x 89 comes from. My local timber merchant uses the above conversion when ordering. Here is an example.

The 3x2 should have been 2x3 to be correct description!

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The same source that provided that softwood table (US centric) also had a hardwood table and hardwoods were pretty true to measurement.

In the US the 2 x 4 is the sawn dimension before dying and finishing. The 1 1/2 x 3 1/2 (38x89) is after drying and finishing, as delivered to the end user. Judging by the quality of wood I see locally it might not be as dry as in the US so the ‘shrinkage’ could be less. <- just a guess.

And if you allow me to be pedantic (too late, you did not stop me), 4 inches is 101.6mm so there is imprecision between the US and the rest of the world, and apparently between the rest of the world and the other rest of the world, depending on local conventions.

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I can add a little bit to this discussion. The items you have mentioned have used dimensions as a “descriptor” and are not covered by the legal issue of Australia having gone metric. If the measurement was being used to determine the price of the item then it would indeed have to comply with the metric/SI system and the Australian Measurement Act. There is a heap of information on the National Measurement Institute web pages [NMI Trade page] From this page you can also find a useful metric conversion tool. I also noted that the Australian Government is asking for input on the future direction of Australia’s measurement system

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What difference does a mix of metric and imperial make? People may care to research the reasons behind the US space shuttle disaster to find out.

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I was indicating seasoned dimensions rather than green ones. When I buy, the final dimensions are what is important for the job at hand.

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Absolutely, which is why the ‘US standard’ sizes make no sense to anyone but the sawmill :wink:

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If you work on Enlish cars like I do sometimes some of the threads on the bolts and nuts are Whitworth and most of the others are SAE ( Society of Aeronuatical Engineeers ) . Threads on the cooling system are usually some form of gas pipe size.
The metric stuff is easy but I dont work on my Peugeot.

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Although SAE has had an impact on aerospace and other disciplines, perhaps a slip of the keyboard?

SAE was the Society of Automotive Engineers, now formally SAE International.

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Thanks, its what I was told years ago with a spanner in my hand. I can still and often do buy Whitwort and SAE for my 1960 Sprite and my 1968 Wolseley.

Most Minis built here up until 1974 are SAE. Lots of people still make and sell SAE and Whitworth round the world - its not hard to find.

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No i don’t have a problem at all, I hate metric!

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This BBC item might be interesting regarding some ramifications of mixed or misstated measures, and not just between imperial and metric.

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Perhaps you meant the Mars Orbiter disaster, as far as I can see neither of the shuttle loses were due to unit conversion/confusion issues.

There is a summary of several problems of this kind here. And some more here.

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The Gimli Glider is a true story of amazing piloting, a healthy dose of luck, and how not to do measurement conversions :wink: Well worth a read … there were other factors …

“The conversion factor provided on the refueller’s paperwork was one that had always been used in the past, when Air Canada’s fleet had been imperial-calibrated.”

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The US remains the largest economy in the world so they call the tune. But speaking of things metric, Australia decided on weights and measure conversion due to our obsession with remaining a supplier to the EU at a time when our focus was in that part of the globe. In reality we should have thought about our own region as now we realise that trade with Asia and the US is all over the place with respect to weights and measures for products. The UK runs both systems which would have been a smart move for Australia in reflection where it not for the purists who claimed it would be too confusing - for whom I have always wondered? As it happens, I’m comfortable with either measure as are most in my acquaintance. Sadly maths skill in Oz is so poor that most milleneals can’t even cope with metric which is why we see advertised pallets, boxes, bunches and bags of produce with measures in small print.
So globally we have aberrations of imperial, US and metric without even thinking about specific ones like a nip of spirits, tablespoons or a pinch of salt etc in recipe books. There are problems with metrics as well, where some units, particularly in math and science, are not a common metric at all which adds to the confusion. The common one we all encounter is the metric ton which is often called a metric tonne being an idiosyncratic form of the two. Don’t let’s even think about real estate agents and their fascination with acres, when hectares are easier to understand. Humans are curious creatures really.

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1 imperial gallon=4.546 litres. 1US gallon= 3.7854 litres supplied by my Sharp calculator. Let’s stay with the SI system and let the rest of the world, UK, USA, remain totally confused.

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Actually, 14th of February, 1966. I can still hear that annoying jingle ringing in my ears half a century later!!

I don’t remember what day it is now - but I’ll never get that jingle out of my head. 8*(

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