I’ve always been a metric sort of person. Not for everything you understand, if asked how far away something is I’ll estimate in feet or miles but when you want precision only metric will do. This especially important when modelling so I measure everything in millimetres.
So it is great to discover that the cardboard model boat kit has all the measurements in imperial. Wood sizes are described at 1/16 rather than 1.5mm. I’ve had to rely on Google to do all the conversions for me – type in “Convert 1/16 inch to mm” and the search engine does all the work.
It doesn’t help that one of the measurements is wrong – the main cross support is not 6/34 from the stern – it’s about 6.75 inches. Roughly. Sort of. I’m going to work it out by pushing the bit of wood back and forth until the edge of the hull appears to fit the deck.
This is all the fault of the Americans. They simply aren’t clever enough to realise that you need millimetres for precision work and probably explains why everything important ever was invented in Great Britain. We Brits worked this out many years ago which is why we lost the war of independence just get rid of them. Imperial units instead of metric, coffee instead of tea, it explains soooo much…
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