Jeremy,
OMG
I owe you a pint, in fact the entire brewery !
Need to find a UK stockist now.
Does the tape lock work well, as the Stanley make we get here IS USELESS, always has been. needs a rubber insert in the cheap plastic lock foot.
I like them 'cos the base is 2.5inch long so abutt and measure and add on 2.5inch.
Does that decimal one have such ?
I have searched and searched for such, I am not the only one in the UK measuring up WW2 feet and decimal inches items !
Thats three , in fact four, just remembered my friend restoring a Hurricane, sold immediately.
We, including the worlds BEST CAD aircraft plan creator, work to WW2 drawings marked in feet and inches, we recreate WW2 items and feet inches is vital.
Trying to add into a WW2 drawing items dimensioned in mm , when they were built to decimaL is asking for trouble.
When Concorde was made between France and the UK, when the parts came together they didnt fit, as the French used mm and we used inches !
I also do German items, and mm is the way there.
Habudg
thanks I’ll take a look.
that may have saved the day.
If someone gave me a feet and inches drawing, and kicked off over the fact the CNC is set to decimal, I would have told them to get stuffed.
They can go and find an old Colchester* or a Bridgeport with so much play in the drive, it may as well be defined in furlongs.
*Though I admit, I sort of was a bad/poor machinist of sorts; some of my most enjoyable times were on the old manual machines.
I find it odd that a WWII drawing would be specified in decimal inches. That seems to undermine the accuracy of the fractional representation? In fact, I thought it would be the sort of practice that would have seen various stationary thrown at the producer of such a drawing; as he is told to take his mustache and smoking jacket far away from the Marble Hall.
All Supermarine Spit drgs were decimal inches for constructional distances and parts to be made.
Hawker shows Imperial for pre existing purchasable wires and tubes. decimal for constructional distances.
Steve, I’ve only seen Supermarine’s wartime blueprints for a few small parts and they have all been in decimal inches. Have you seen any original blueprints for large items like wings or fuselage? All the Internet stuff seems like modern recreations. If you have, what units did they use?
However I have only ever made anything below half a metre; maybe there is a bias on smaller parts; and many were precision engine parts. Come to think of it, I have certainly seen decimal inches drawings. I clearly forgot! But for me it is still rare.
But yes, in the modern day recreation, I would just convert everything on a machine to metric, no matter what the customer gave me.
One thing I have enjoyed in the past are double-unit drawings. Mostly on 80s and 70s drawings.
Blueprints created by British Industry at the time will have been governed by British Standard 308, Engineering Drawing Practice. Now I only have a copy from 1953 which I cannot say with absolute certainty would give the same instruction as the wartime edition - but I would be surprised in this case if it didn’t.
Clause 13 a. (v) states:
Where feet are used as one unit of a dimension, it is preferable to express parts of an inch in fractions, thus: 5’-7½" and not 5’-7.5"
And Clause 13 a. (vi) states:
Where decimals are used, any figures preceding the decimal point should preferably be given in inches and not in feet and inches, thus: 25.42" and not 2’-1.42"
Thus to dimension in feet and decimal inches would seem to be in contravention of the British Standard, unless you can show that the wartime standard was materially different.
Rhino supports the two schemes approved by the standard. It does not seem unreasonable that it doesn’t include a scheme that contravenes it.
