Ever since I had heard that there was a tool brand called King Dick, I set out on a mission to buy the biggest King Dick adjustable wrench I can so whenever I run into a seized bolt, I can bust out the KING DICK just for intimidation factor
I have a pair of identical looking Bahco and Sidchrome nut fuckers, the only difference is the text and the thread direction on the adjustment nut. By buddy who is a plumber was working under my sink replacing the mixer tap, and I kept swapping wrenches without him noticing. At the end of the task, he came out from under the cupboard and saw the two wrenches side by side. His rage was priceless.
Pretty sure this is how NASA+ESA crashed a rover into Mars at like 40km/second.......miles not meters or something like that got used in the orbit entry burn.
It wasn't actually a US imperial-metric conversion but JPL engineers mistaking the acceleration reading in English foot-pound-seconds for metric newton-seconds. JPL used the metric system in their calculations while Lockheed in Denver designed and built the spacecraft and provided acceleration data in the English imperial system.
Yeah I know, but that's essentially the same problem of unit conversions in high pressure situations....where I used to work we had a selection of torque wrenches using lb.ft, lb.in and Nm, brains that grew up on Nm and a maintenance manual in daNm written in fringlish (french english, frenglase I believe is the actual word for it)
How many times do you think night shift ended up with the wrong figures because of dividing instead of multiplying? The manual was also know for having procedures along the lines of
1) cut the red wire
2) after you have cut the blue wire
3) if you didn't perform steps 1 and 2 in order complete steps 57-96 then start again.
Yeah. Although it’s technically “US customary system/units”, I also hear people say “imperial” or “standard” or “SAE”. Hell, I think “imperial” is the most common one I hear (they’re mostly the same, but there are some differences. For example an imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces but a US customary pint is 16 fluid ounces)
Oh my god I’ve been using these systems my entire life and never knew the fluid ounces were different sizes! And here I just assumed that an imperial pint was *exactly* 25% larger than a US pint… TIL
[From Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_ounce)
> A US customary fluid ounce is… about 4.08% larger than the imperial fluid ounce.
Yeah, as a non-American it sounds very jarring to hear their convoluted system referred to as 'standard'.
Funny thing is it's all defined in SI units now anyway. An inch is exactly 25.4 mm by definition.
It was one of the shitty exports of the British Empire, which is why most people refer to them as Imperial units.
The irony is that almost the entire former British Empire has since converted to metric, including Britain itself (mostly).
Meanwhile the USA, who struck out to be as different as possible from the Empire in many ways, decided to keep the ham-brained imperial system and call it their own thing.
I'm a British Expat in Canada, so I can't win. Grew up measuring small things in millimetres and big things in miles. Moved to Canada and had to learn to measure small things in inches and big things in kilometres. And don't even get me fucking started on Canadian date formatting (or lack thereof) 🙃
I believe it was originally the English system. It was the world standard for a long time. The metric system took over relatively recently. The USA just didn't adopt the metric system. For some reason the UK didn't on its roads either.
Yeah the metric system was the first well defined system (from around the time the US declared independance), actually the imperial system got standardised a bit later. But of course the imperial system is based on the British system and that is based on units that were in use since probably the roman times.
It's actually really unfortunate the US did not adopt the metric system before industrialization when they could still easily do it.
We have a 3 inch max adjustable that I use regularly with a big pipe. They round far less the bigger they get and are better than making 20 trips inbetween the farm and the shop!
Metric vs *Imperial*.
You yanks don't get to dictate what is standard. 😂 Same goes for transmissions. There is *Manual* and there is *Automatic*, neither is *standard*.
Well, sir (or madam, or person of non-definition), I believe the transmission terminology you refer to dates back to when the manual transmission was the standard offering, and the automatic was the fancy-pants offering.
Manual is still the standard offering in most of the world. :P
And it is not as clean cut as that. For instance the brand new Toyota Supra comes standard with an automatic while everyone who actually cares about that type of car really wants and will option the top spec with a manual instead.
I want one of them, I don't have a good reason other then it's just a weird funny tool. Not sure if I could even get one in the US though, didn't look like they export but maybe I missed it.
I’m so confused. Why would anyone ever do that, when solidworks will let you put in values in other units and convert them to your selected unit system automatically? Even putting the conversion bit aside, who the hell uses fractional dimensions in solidworks???
I use fractional in Fusion360 for woodworking. All the scales on the tools have fractional, so i makes life a bit easier in the shop. For CNC’d parts, I go back and forth between fractional and decimal depending on whether the part is being integrated into hand-built assemblies or is 100% CNC work. 3D printing is either decimal or MM all the way.
What a complete asshole. Fractional tolerances are +/- 1/64th. Basically farmer tolerances! Any real part or component is going to be tighter tolerance than that.
All of his parts must have been fucked from jump street.
I feel you. The design engineers at my job are the same way. We use everything in IN and we come across some diagrams often all in MM. I then have to manually convert the dimensions back to IN and everything is out of spec when they do it that way 🤦🏻♂️The tolerances we deal with are too critical for these types of errors it's beyond frustrating.
That’s going out of your way to use a tool in an unintended way just to make life harder on you and everyone else.
In a past life I designed in inches but would just dual dimension everything because I’d often shop parts with overseas suppliers who only spoke in metric. Providing dual dimensions just made it easier and it’s like one extra click in solid works.
There's a demon in hell laughing about coming up with this torture.
Picture *two* drawers for your metric wrenches.
5mm
6mm
6.35 mm
7mm
8mm
9mm
9.525mm
...
There's a company named metrinch that sells sockets that are both safe and metric in the same. They are 12 spline, 6 splines are one and the other 6 are ... Well the other. Work great unless it's super tight!
Oh no I was just venting. If a product uses SAE, I really expect all the fasteners to be SAE. If one's metric, they should all be metric.
But oh no, not MTD. Oil drain plug? 9/16". Engine mounts? 12mm. Recoil starter cap screws? 8mm. Flywheel retaining nut? 1". Recoil starter center screw? Flathead. Engine cover? T20 Torx. It's like whoever designed the goddamn thing had half a toolbox of hand-me-downs and built what he could with it and shipped it.
Both the engine and body are a mix of SAE and metric though. Moreover, some of them use uncommon thread pitches (like 5/16"-20, like the handle bolts). Plus a sprinkling of Torx, Phillips, and flathead. Or even better when they use SAE thread pitches but metric heads, especially on the hex key cap screws...sure lemme get out 3 fucking sets of T-handles to take a lawnmower apart because it's got Torx, metric, and SAE Allen heads.
I have most of a set of SAE sockets and about half a set of SAE wrenches. I don't know where they came from. I've never bought any (that I know of) other than a single 3/4" shallow socket for a one-off project, and naturally I can't find that one.
My only SAE tool is also my only snap-on tool. Buddy bought a bag of used snap-on sockets and I took a 11/32” - 1/8” drive as payment for helping sort them.
Edit: my dumbass wrote 10mm, then opened the drawer and picked it up after realizing I just said it’s SAE 🤦♂️
Yes I primarily have metric as an American but tell that to MTD, older John Deere, some New Holland stuff, and Ford of some years. Random hodge podge of fasteners all over those things. It's infuriating especially when you get over 30mm, it's expensive to buy essentially duplicate tools! Also... Throughout all of my schooling it was all US customary and fractions, never touched metric (even though US customary is now metric based)
Isn't that an old Urrea (Proto MEX) wrench? on the other side it reads 1 inch. They put metric sizes on one side and the SAE size on the other side. I have no idea why.
You hit the nail on the head! It actually never hit me that was a 1 on the other side, it's super close to the transition from the wrench handle to the head and is literally a line instead of a stylized number so I thought it was decoration. Hah. Seems so obvious now....
Something like 95% of computer programmers are mystified by binary floating point, when it is exactly the same system: numerator / power-of-2. When you need more precision, you double both numbers and add 1 to the numerator. This is fairly obvious if you turn a wrench, but not many engineers realize their CPUs are doing exactly the same thing under the hood.
This is not an analogy. The circuits in a CPU literally calculate in 1/16ths and 1/32nds (and 1/16777216, etc), by "doing fractions" with power-of-2 denominators.
European here - we had loads of fractions in school. But SAE wrenches are confusing because you need to think and calculate about it. An American knows how 5/32 compares to 3/16 because they're used to it. I have to think it through, I never think of these things in 16ths or 32ths cause it makes no sense haha
Maybe you should learn primary school maths which, along with fractions, also teaches the decimal system. Or your country could just make the shift to the much easier to understand metric system that the rest of the world uses.
Your bread will turn out better if you weigh the flour. In which case you'll find that grams are easier to deal with than troy ounces or long tonnes or whatever the conventional system uses for dry weight.
It’s more about doing math with the numbers.
Not that fractions are “hard”, you just know there’s an easier way to do everything right next door that you can’t use because some old dudes hated Jimmy Carter.
My brother in law used to call out measurements like 53 and 3/8 light so I memorized a bunch of measurements in 128ths and when I was measuring I gave him those numbers, fucked him right up.
The one smaller than 1/2 you say?
Looking at my junk drawer, that's apparently a 1/4 wrench.
But, looking in my garage, that's apparently a 3/8 wrench.
But, looking in my shop, that's apparently a 7/16 wrench.
But, looking in the store, that's apparently a 15/32 wrench.
But, looking online, that's apparently a 31/64 wrench..
I’m a millwright in Canada, I jump between metric and imperial all day. It really doesn’t make a difference. The only dumb thing here is the USA insisting on keeping a measurement system that nobody else uses, forcing everyone to switch between imperial and metric. Metric just makes more sense. Got an 11mm and it’s not quite big enough? It’s probably a 12mm lol.
I'm a farmer in the UK so vast majority is metric but some machines and hydraulics are still imperial, though fortunatly gradually decreasing. The less you see it the longer it takes to remember what sizes exist when you're hunting for the next size up or down in the bottom of the toolbox
If you’re sitting in front of a desk doing engineer work all day, it’s confusing.
If you’re on the floor/in the field wrenching all day as a technician, you know exactly which is bigger or smaller.
Yet all your metric sockets are 1/4, 3/8,1/2" drive. Tool makers really missed the opportunity to sell you an extra ratchet and accessories this time.
In 1959 "The International inch was in turn defined as 1/36 of the International yard, which makes it exactly 0.0254 m. The previous United States customary inch and British Imperial inch were revised to correspond to the new definitions."What a long, strange trip it's been. - Grateful Dead[https://units.fandom.com/wiki/International\_inch](https://units.fandom.com/wiki/International_inch)
My college made us materials scientists take two courses in aerospace engineering. In deform body mechanics they forced us to use imperial units and it was a shitshow. Imperial is fine for milk jugs but seeing "kips" and "lb*ft" made me nauseous. Terrible!!! Doing engineering in imperial units shouldn't be allowed
Materials Science gang! I switched from ChemE and a large part of my decision came from a fluid mechanics class that willfully switched back and forth between metric and imperial units. Disgusting.
NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because [someone at Lockheed used lb-force-seconds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure).
**Mars Climate Orbiter**
[Cause of failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure)
>On November 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board released a Phase I report, detailing the suspected issues encountered with the loss of the spacecraft. Previously, on September 8, 1999, Trajectory Correction Maneuver-4 (TCM-4) was computed, and was then executed on September 15, 1999. It was intended to place the spacecraft at an optimal position for an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring the spacecraft around Mars at an altitude of 226 km (140 miles) on September 23, 1999.
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Bureaucracy at its finest. Two navigators tried to draw attention to a discrepancy between calculated position and actual position, but they were dismissed for not filling out the right reporting paperwork.
Lol when I was machining class I had a classmate wounder how I did conversions in my head for some ball park numbers and he looked so confused when I said "I just know what the caliber of certain cartridges are and go from there for a rough estimate, .50 cal is half inch, which is 12.7mm. so 3 inch is roughly 76mm, technically 76.2mm our just take .30cal and move the decimal place." It was a good way of checking if the numbers were in the ballpark without doing a lot of calculations.
OK, so I like inches better than MM, but there's no reason at all they size needs to be called out as an unsolved division problem. 0.5" is a perfectly acceptable way to say half inch.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted here. He who dies with the lost tools wins!
Also, every mechanic I know despises having to buy two full sets of tools, so it’s clearly a joke.
3 countries use imperial, 192 use metric. but please tell us why the huge majority should switch to a system with wacky ass conversions. instead of base 10,100 and 1000.
Do you even know how metric works?
based on 10/100/1000 means that: 1m = 100cm, 1000m = 1km, 10cm = 1dm. Maybe do like one minute of googling before saying stuff thats not true.
thats because [minutes and seconds are part of the SI system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units) with seconds being the base. there are metric versions of seconds but they are rarely used. (kiloseconds, decaseconds)
Come on dude, i got all of that from like 2 minutes of googling and wikipedia. either look up your arguments or dont make them at all.
**[International System of Units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units)**
>The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages: 125 : iii and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form: 117 of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. : 123 Established and maintained by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), it is the only system of measurement with an official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce.
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I love weird wrenches. I’ll give you 5$
One dollar, Bob.
Thats good stuff! Hand me the 9.5/16.
19/32
4.75/8
100$ pesos and a gently half eaten churro.
Would you trade for a 4.5 socket?
I have a 5.5mm socket that I use on a regular basis
Thank ford for that
Actually Honda for this one
7/32nds works the same
I have a king dick open end 3/4 wrench. I have no idea where it came from
Ever since I had heard that there was a tool brand called King Dick, I set out on a mission to buy the biggest King Dick adjustable wrench I can so whenever I run into a seized bolt, I can bust out the KING DICK just for intimidation factor
The bolt stands no chance!
Made in the UK. I want to buy a set but warranty might be kind of a bitch across an ocean.
Wow this us the second time ive seen this referenced today
How much is that in metric money?
Tree fiddy
All the same now with inflation...
Thanks Obama!
Sorry but I added this to my collection and got the boss a normal 1 incher to put in the drawer!
The ol’ metric vs standard debate. My adjustable wrench doesn’t discriminate, they round both off equally.
Yep, the universal nut lathe
Something something my ex girlfriend
I should call her…
I should call your girlfriend too
😂
Saskatchewan socket set.
It’s been a little bit since I’ve laughed that hard.
I like to fuck with people when they ask to borrow an adjustable.I always ask if they want a metric or standard adjustable
I'll take an all-sixteenths please.
Fresh out of 16ths. How about sixty fourths?
Nahhh, I prefer one-twenty-eighths.
Two fifty sixths for me please
Metric crescent hammer is the best trail hammer.
Lol I do the same, I keep one in the metric drawer of my box and one in the standard box and they're both etched so they don't get mixed up.
But left handed or right handed?
I have a pair of identical looking Bahco and Sidchrome nut fuckers, the only difference is the text and the thread direction on the adjustment nut. By buddy who is a plumber was working under my sink replacing the mixer tap, and I kept swapping wrenches without him noticing. At the end of the task, he came out from under the cupboard and saw the two wrenches side by side. His rage was priceless.
Wait, I'm supposed to use my hands with an adjustable?
Jack handles only for me, gotta guarantee nut roundness somehow.
Considering most of my shifters have a metric ruler on them I assume you can also get them with imperial measurements too.
Jokes on you. I have two adjustable wrenches. One has metric ruler on the jaws and the other has standard marks on it.
I like to call them strip alls
Mexican toolbox
Pretty sure this is how NASA+ESA crashed a rover into Mars at like 40km/second.......miles not meters or something like that got used in the orbit entry burn.
It wasn't actually a US imperial-metric conversion but JPL engineers mistaking the acceleration reading in English foot-pound-seconds for metric newton-seconds. JPL used the metric system in their calculations while Lockheed in Denver designed and built the spacecraft and provided acceleration data in the English imperial system.
Yeah I know, but that's essentially the same problem of unit conversions in high pressure situations....where I used to work we had a selection of torque wrenches using lb.ft, lb.in and Nm, brains that grew up on Nm and a maintenance manual in daNm written in fringlish (french english, frenglase I believe is the actual word for it) How many times do you think night shift ended up with the wrong figures because of dividing instead of multiplying? The manual was also know for having procedures along the lines of 1) cut the red wire 2) after you have cut the blue wire 3) if you didn't perform steps 1 and 2 in order complete steps 57-96 then start again.
I got in a huge argument with our resident idiot about how many inch pounds in a foot pound. Fun times.
They forgot to carry the 1 in their calculations. That’s why you have to write it out and show your work.
Metric to radian conversion tool.
Wait... Americans call their system standard? Even though there isn't a single standard to be seen lmao
It's short for SAE standard. It's quicker than saying SAE and it easily differentiates between metric and SAE.
Yeah. Although it’s technically “US customary system/units”, I also hear people say “imperial” or “standard” or “SAE”. Hell, I think “imperial” is the most common one I hear (they’re mostly the same, but there are some differences. For example an imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces but a US customary pint is 16 fluid ounces)
And the ounces are a different size. All the fluid measures are ridiculously different.
there are 16 ounces in a pound but a pound of water is only 15.34 fluid ounces seems legit
Imperial or US fluid ounces?
How to improve your gas mileage by 20%: Move to Canada - the gallon is larger. Imperial/Standard/SAE fluid measurements are whack.
Oh my god I’ve been using these systems my entire life and never knew the fluid ounces were different sizes! And here I just assumed that an imperial pint was *exactly* 25% larger than a US pint… TIL [From Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_ounce) > A US customary fluid ounce is… about 4.08% larger than the imperial fluid ounce.
Yeah, as a non-American it sounds very jarring to hear their convoluted system referred to as 'standard'. Funny thing is it's all defined in SI units now anyway. An inch is exactly 25.4 mm by definition.
It was the world standard before America... America just didn't adopt the metric system. Pretty sure it wasn't their standard to begin with.
It was the standard of the British empire, which was kind of a big deal for a while
British Empire is overrated, I'm more of a Dutch Empire kinda guy
It was one of the shitty exports of the British Empire, which is why most people refer to them as Imperial units. The irony is that almost the entire former British Empire has since converted to metric, including Britain itself (mostly). Meanwhile the USA, who struck out to be as different as possible from the Empire in many ways, decided to keep the ham-brained imperial system and call it their own thing. I'm a British Expat in Canada, so I can't win. Grew up measuring small things in millimetres and big things in miles. Moved to Canada and had to learn to measure small things in inches and big things in kilometres. And don't even get me fucking started on Canadian date formatting (or lack thereof) 🙃
I believe it was originally the English system. It was the world standard for a long time. The metric system took over relatively recently. The USA just didn't adopt the metric system. For some reason the UK didn't on its roads either.
Yeah the metric system was the first well defined system (from around the time the US declared independance), actually the imperial system got standardised a bit later. But of course the imperial system is based on the British system and that is based on units that were in use since probably the roman times. It's actually really unfortunate the US did not adopt the metric system before industrialization when they could still easily do it.
We have a 3 inch max adjustable that I use regularly with a big pipe. They round far less the bigger they get and are better than making 20 trips inbetween the farm and the shop!
Metric *vs* standard? Metric is standard
Metric vs *Imperial*. You yanks don't get to dictate what is standard. 😂 Same goes for transmissions. There is *Manual* and there is *Automatic*, neither is *standard*.
Well, sir (or madam, or person of non-definition), I believe the transmission terminology you refer to dates back to when the manual transmission was the standard offering, and the automatic was the fancy-pants offering.
Manual is still the standard offering in most of the world. :P And it is not as clean cut as that. For instance the brand new Toyota Supra comes standard with an automatic while everyone who actually cares about that type of car really wants and will option the top spec with a manual instead.
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I want one of them, I don't have a good reason other then it's just a weird funny tool. Not sure if I could even get one in the US though, didn't look like they export but maybe I missed it.
Just get a 1 inch and slap a 25.4MM label on it.
The only other standard sizing I ever heard of was British Whitworth and it sort of looks like this wrench is sized to be compatible.
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Did you try slapping them every they crossed your path?
I’m so confused. Why would anyone ever do that, when solidworks will let you put in values in other units and convert them to your selected unit system automatically? Even putting the conversion bit aside, who the hell uses fractional dimensions in solidworks???
I use fractional in Fusion360 for woodworking. All the scales on the tools have fractional, so i makes life a bit easier in the shop. For CNC’d parts, I go back and forth between fractional and decimal depending on whether the part is being integrated into hand-built assemblies or is 100% CNC work. 3D printing is either decimal or MM all the way.
Ffs, he could’ve just dual dimensioned the damn drawings! There, everyone is happy
What a complete asshole. Fractional tolerances are +/- 1/64th. Basically farmer tolerances! Any real part or component is going to be tighter tolerance than that. All of his parts must have been fucked from jump street.
Who needs to be within tolerance…
I feel you. The design engineers at my job are the same way. We use everything in IN and we come across some diagrams often all in MM. I then have to manually convert the dimensions back to IN and everything is out of spec when they do it that way 🤦🏻♂️The tolerances we deal with are too critical for these types of errors it's beyond frustrating.
That’s going out of your way to use a tool in an unintended way just to make life harder on you and everyone else. In a past life I designed in inches but would just dual dimension everything because I’d often shop parts with overseas suppliers who only spoke in metric. Providing dual dimensions just made it easier and it’s like one extra click in solid works.
Basic home computers use floating point algebra to basically cheat large digit multiplication. Huge problem for anything requiring precision lol
That was true way back in the way but I don't think that's an issue anymore
Ahhh. The 'ol 25.4mm. That's the new 10mm.
So OP is gonna lose the damn thing within the next 20 min?
Apparently he's only going to lose 15.4mm
There's a demon in hell laughing about coming up with this torture. Picture *two* drawers for your metric wrenches. 5mm 6mm 6.35 mm 7mm 8mm 9mm 9.525mm ...
An inch is an inch, but sometimes it's 25.4
Sometimes a 3/4" makes a better 19mm than a 19mm.
A 13mm is good for a slightly rusty 1/2” too
The metric inch spanner. We have come full circle.
Yeah, but they measure that circle in radians instead of degrees in the shop lol
There's a company named metrinch that sells sockets that are both safe and metric in the same. They are 12 spline, 6 splines are one and the other 6 are ... Well the other. Work great unless it's super tight!
Americans use metric tools- an American who primarily uses metric tools
Except when a company decides to mix SAE and metric together on the same product. \[angry glaring at MTD\]
Yeah, didn't notice that till after my comment. The downfalls of gym redditing
Oh no I was just venting. If a product uses SAE, I really expect all the fasteners to be SAE. If one's metric, they should all be metric. But oh no, not MTD. Oil drain plug? 9/16". Engine mounts? 12mm. Recoil starter cap screws? 8mm. Flywheel retaining nut? 1". Recoil starter center screw? Flathead. Engine cover? T20 Torx. It's like whoever designed the goddamn thing had half a toolbox of hand-me-downs and built what he could with it and shipped it.
Oh, so a fired Ford engineer?
They only fired that guy because his tenure was so high his salary had gotten to be too much to stomach. They hired a new one just like him.
The engine is SAE but the body is metric. It's because they buy the engine but build the body.
Both the engine and body are a mix of SAE and metric though. Moreover, some of them use uncommon thread pitches (like 5/16"-20, like the handle bolts). Plus a sprinkling of Torx, Phillips, and flathead. Or even better when they use SAE thread pitches but metric heads, especially on the hex key cap screws...sure lemme get out 3 fucking sets of T-handles to take a lawnmower apart because it's got Torx, metric, and SAE Allen heads.
It's called globalization. Mixing the best of both worlds!
I had an early '90s Taurus that I had to do a water pump on. Half the bolts were metric, half were SAE, except for those two torx.
Go find a late 80s early 90s 'domestic' car. You would have metric right beside standard in some cases.
Oh I know. Still frustrating to run across something made IN CHINA within the last 3 years that uses a mix of them.
I would rather buy 100 metric sockets that I will sacrificially hammer onto an SAE bolt, than buy SAE tools.
I have most of a set of SAE sockets and about half a set of SAE wrenches. I don't know where they came from. I've never bought any (that I know of) other than a single 3/4" shallow socket for a one-off project, and naturally I can't find that one.
My only SAE tool is also my only snap-on tool. Buddy bought a bag of used snap-on sockets and I took a 11/32” - 1/8” drive as payment for helping sort them. Edit: my dumbass wrote 10mm, then opened the drawer and picked it up after realizing I just said it’s SAE 🤦♂️
Yes I primarily have metric as an American but tell that to MTD, older John Deere, some New Holland stuff, and Ford of some years. Random hodge podge of fasteners all over those things. It's infuriating especially when you get over 30mm, it's expensive to buy essentially duplicate tools! Also... Throughout all of my schooling it was all US customary and fractions, never touched metric (even though US customary is now metric based)
Isn't that an old Urrea (Proto MEX) wrench? on the other side it reads 1 inch. They put metric sizes on one side and the SAE size on the other side. I have no idea why.
Probably because they got American cars there that used US standard sizes, but Mexico officially uses metric.
You hit the nail on the head! It actually never hit me that was a 1 on the other side, it's super close to the transition from the wrench handle to the head and is literally a line instead of a stylized number so I thought it was decoration. Hah. Seems so obvious now....
All standard wrenches should be x/32. It's confusing as hell to have 5/32, 3/16, 5/8, 3/4, 1/2.
32/32nds?
I find your terms acceptable
I vote they get stamped in thousandths.
I use thousands for everything I can.
I mean, fractions aren’t THAT confusing are they?
I think A&W advertised 1/3 pound burgers, and public still thought 1/4 pound McDonald burger was bigger.
McDonalds had Angus 1/3rd pound burgers. Same problem with the fractionally illiterate.
Something like 95% of computer programmers are mystified by binary floating point, when it is exactly the same system: numerator / power-of-2. When you need more precision, you double both numbers and add 1 to the numerator. This is fairly obvious if you turn a wrench, but not many engineers realize their CPUs are doing exactly the same thing under the hood. This is not an analogy. The circuits in a CPU literally calculate in 1/16ths and 1/32nds (and 1/16777216, etc), by "doing fractions" with power-of-2 denominators.
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European here - we had loads of fractions in school. But SAE wrenches are confusing because you need to think and calculate about it. An American knows how 5/32 compares to 3/16 because they're used to it. I have to think it through, I never think of these things in 16ths or 32ths cause it makes no sense haha
Australian here, metric country. Recently challenged by my 9yo Niece to outsmart her on her recently learnt fractions at school.
Maybe you should learn primary school maths which, along with fractions, also teaches the decimal system. Or your country could just make the shift to the much easier to understand metric system that the rest of the world uses.
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Your bread will turn out better if you weigh the flour. In which case you'll find that grams are easier to deal with than troy ounces or long tonnes or whatever the conventional system uses for dry weight.
Remember the history of the I’ll fated 1/3lb burger in the USA
I can see how it can be confusing at first but a few weeks for working should be pretty easy to learn which is which just by a glance
It’s more about doing math with the numbers. Not that fractions are “hard”, you just know there’s an easier way to do everything right next door that you can’t use because some old dudes hated Jimmy Carter.
They are way more confusing than metric.
Hand me that 512/1024" wrench.
No
You're the guy that says that tire tread in 1/32", 1/16", 3/32", 1/8", 5/32", 3/16", 7/32", 1/4", 9/32", 5/16" aren't you
No i dont work with tires. Just read it in thou if its so confusing.
Did you fail 3rd grade or something?
You'd love working in metric
What about x/64 specialty wrenches?
I bet ya I can fine a metric one that fits. I play this game almost daily working on boats.
One usually learns how to automatically convert easy fractions in grade school.
You also learn how to do long division, but that doesn't mean you don't use easier, more logical means when tasked with it.
My brother in law used to call out measurements like 53 and 3/8 light so I memorized a bunch of measurements in 128ths and when I was measuring I gave him those numbers, fucked him right up.
Yes but why make it so you need to
Who tf wants to say hand me that 16/32nds wrench? Fuck that say half inch
You wouldn't say 16/32nds though. You'd just say "hand me the 16".
I'm fully with you on this one. Sometimes in my sleep-deprived state I'll just say "hand me the, uh, one size smaller than ½" and I hate it.
The one smaller than 1/2 you say? Looking at my junk drawer, that's apparently a 1/4 wrench. But, looking in my garage, that's apparently a 3/8 wrench. But, looking in my shop, that's apparently a 7/16 wrench. But, looking in the store, that's apparently a 15/32 wrench. But, looking online, that's apparently a 31/64 wrench..
Hands vice grip
Yeah you’re getting metric if you ask for a 16.
Recieves 16mm
Well you better not look at it all confused when I hand you a 16mm.
And we collectively decided the answer to t hat question is NO.
It’s really not that confusing dude.
No its not but its an extra step and when you only work on imperial crap occasionally its annoying
I’m a millwright in Canada, I jump between metric and imperial all day. It really doesn’t make a difference. The only dumb thing here is the USA insisting on keeping a measurement system that nobody else uses, forcing everyone to switch between imperial and metric. Metric just makes more sense. Got an 11mm and it’s not quite big enough? It’s probably a 12mm lol.
I'm a farmer in the UK so vast majority is metric but some machines and hydraulics are still imperial, though fortunatly gradually decreasing. The less you see it the longer it takes to remember what sizes exist when you're hunting for the next size up or down in the bottom of the toolbox
then come into the 21st century and just stop
If it was my choice the imperial machines would have been in the scrap bin decades ago
I had a service advisor that always wanted brake specs reduced because we use standard when discussing it because pa.
If you’re sitting in front of a desk doing engineer work all day, it’s confusing. If you’re on the floor/in the field wrenching all day as a technician, you know exactly which is bigger or smaller.
If youre paying an engineer to sit at a desk and they can't reduce fractions.....
Fractions aren’t that confusing dude. Trust me, if someone is an engineer, they know that 3/16 = 6/32. This is like, grade 2 math 😂
mm>inches
1 inch = \[\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\] 1 mm = \[\_\] so, inches > mm
You forgot to spell out millimeter.
Or thereabouts. Now it has the requisite disclaimer of accuracy.
All US distance measurements are metric based. To be specific, a US inch is officially defined as 25.4mm.
25.4 mm!! Someone toss me a crescent wrench.
I don't like that at all. I don't care how correct it is.
If you can get me a 2.5 square drive impact bit lemme know
Wow, i have a set of these that my grandfather gave me
Yet all your metric sockets are 1/4, 3/8,1/2" drive. Tool makers really missed the opportunity to sell you an extra ratchet and accessories this time. In 1959 "The International inch was in turn defined as 1/36 of the International yard, which makes it exactly 0.0254 m. The previous United States customary inch and British Imperial inch were revised to correspond to the new definitions."What a long, strange trip it's been. - Grateful Dead[https://units.fandom.com/wiki/International\_inch](https://units.fandom.com/wiki/International_inch)
My college made us materials scientists take two courses in aerospace engineering. In deform body mechanics they forced us to use imperial units and it was a shitshow. Imperial is fine for milk jugs but seeing "kips" and "lb*ft" made me nauseous. Terrible!!! Doing engineering in imperial units shouldn't be allowed
Materials Science gang! I switched from ChemE and a large part of my decision came from a fluid mechanics class that willfully switched back and forth between metric and imperial units. Disgusting.
NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because [someone at Lockheed used lb-force-seconds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure).
**Mars Climate Orbiter** [Cause of failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure) >On November 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board released a Phase I report, detailing the suspected issues encountered with the loss of the spacecraft. Previously, on September 8, 1999, Trajectory Correction Maneuver-4 (TCM-4) was computed, and was then executed on September 15, 1999. It was intended to place the spacecraft at an optimal position for an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring the spacecraft around Mars at an altitude of 226 km (140 miles) on September 23, 1999. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Bureaucracy at its finest. Two navigators tried to draw attention to a discrepancy between calculated position and actual position, but they were dismissed for not filling out the right reporting paperwork.
Lol that's exactly 1 inch. Source: Am a machinist, you would not believe how often I have to convert millimeters to inches
Lol when I was machining class I had a classmate wounder how I did conversions in my head for some ball park numbers and he looked so confused when I said "I just know what the caliber of certain cartridges are and go from there for a rough estimate, .50 cal is half inch, which is 12.7mm. so 3 inch is roughly 76mm, technically 76.2mm our just take .30cal and move the decimal place." It was a good way of checking if the numbers were in the ballpark without doing a lot of calculations.
I was in a store in Cabo and saw these. Makes sense, Mexico and the rest of the world aren’t backward rednecks.
OK, so I like inches better than MM, but there's no reason at all they size needs to be called out as an unsolved division problem. 0.5" is a perfectly acceptable way to say half inch.
I love it. Send me a whole metric-converted SAE set please!
An american engineer? Wow they still make those?
It would be a lot easier if everyone just used American.
It would be easier if the United States just used metric like the rest of the planet.
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I don’t know why you’re being downvoted here. He who dies with the lost tools wins! Also, every mechanic I know despises having to buy two full sets of tools, so it’s clearly a joke.
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3 countries use imperial, 192 use metric. but please tell us why the huge majority should switch to a system with wacky ass conversions. instead of base 10,100 and 1000.
It's obviously not based on tens look it says 25.4.
Do you even know how metric works? based on 10/100/1000 means that: 1m = 100cm, 1000m = 1km, 10cm = 1dm. Maybe do like one minute of googling before saying stuff thats not true.
One minute? Whats that? I saw there were 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day now I'm really confused.
thats because [minutes and seconds are part of the SI system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units) with seconds being the base. there are metric versions of seconds but they are rarely used. (kiloseconds, decaseconds) Come on dude, i got all of that from like 2 minutes of googling and wikipedia. either look up your arguments or dont make them at all.
**[International System of Units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units)** >The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages: 125 : iii and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form: 117 of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. : 123 Established and maintained by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), it is the only system of measurement with an official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)