Good point on carpenters making do with the materials they have. I was in the U.K. a month or so ago. Talking to a couple of relatives I have there in the construction business, I was quite surprised how using metric units has become routine to them. They were even using metric units to describe rough guesses at lengths and weights! These guys mostly work on remodeling old buildings that are a hodge-podge of sizes to begin with and so introducing one more measuring system is no serious disadvanatage, especially since it carries so many other advantages. Chris -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [USMA:10107] Canadian lumber Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 11:54:53 -0600 From: "Gregory. Peterson & Tammy Booth Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> My wife gave me enough lumber for Christmas this year so that I could finally build a work bench. She was kind enough do have some precutting done at the lumber yard (mainly to fit the lumber into our car) and, since she is as pro-metric as I am, the cuts were all done in rational SI. Here's some observations I made: �2x4's� are not made equal. They tend to vary in the �2� dimension from 37 mm to 40 mm. The �4� dimension was consistently 89 mm. My father told me of a time, not so long ago, when houses were build out of rough lumber that was actually 2-in x 4-in. As recent as 20 or so years ago it was planed by 1/8-in on side to be 1-3/4-in x 3-3/4-in (44.5 x 92.3 mm). Now the size is 1-1/2-in x 3-1/2 in... approximately. Now in Canada houses cannot use lumber smaller than a �2x6� (38 x 140 mm) for the main walls. The �3/4-inch� plywood I used was not 3/4-inch thick. The label on the sheet was � 18.5 - 4 x 8 CSP Standard � Translation: 18.5 mm thick, 4-feet x 8-feet. In fact it was exactly 18.5 mm (0.728-in) wide according to all my measuring tools. Finally a sheet of peg-board (pressed board with a grid of holes) had a label � 1/4" 4' X 8' 6mm Standard Perf Made in Canada �. The holes in the peg board were all 1-in apart, the sheet size was 4-feet x 8-feet, but the thickness was 6 mm (0.236-in), not 1/4-in. With all these changes in material sizes/requirements I feel the arguement that �new metric sizes would be difficult to use since old houses are not metric� does not hold any water. Carpenters could make due as they have had for years. It would be so simple for us to convert to metric construction... if someone in a place of authority had the mind to do so. btw... I build my 175 cm long, 60 cm wide, and 90 cm tall workbench completely with SI units. No problems at all. I could only imagine how difficult it would have been to use all those fractions of an inch in place of millimetres. greg -- ======================================================= Gregory Peterson & Tammy Booth Peterson location: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. co-ordinates: 52�05'54" N, 106�36'00" W URL: http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/gregtami/metric.html "Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm?" -- Yoda, Jedi Master
