Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Those pesky metric conversions

I grew up using metric just enough to get me in trouble. For the most part, I have no need for it now but it keeps popping up. I hate it when I look for something on Amazon and some Chinaman describes his junk in cm or grams. I keep some links handy for quick reference that you might find useful.

Here's one for termperature conversions. I printed this one and keep it by my computer. It's very useful when some 24HR member from Australia talks about how hot it is. C to F conversion

Here's a link for calculators for about any metric conversion you'll ever need. I keep it at the top of my bookmarks. METRIC CONVERSION CALCULATOR

For a quick reference of unit to unit conversions, you might find this handy. I printed it. It's a web site for kids but aren't we all just that? UNIT CONVERSIONS

If you have other good converters, please post them.

454 grams in a pound, read a cereal box, commit to memory

A thousand grams is a kilo, a thousand grams is also a liter
But we call a liquid a gram an mL

2.2 lbs is a kilo

One gram of water is 1cc

Things yiu *should* just as every day knowledge.

Read and memorize labels. 12 oz pepsi can, 355 ml, ounce of sticky-icky 28-29 grams

This stuff separates the wise ass ine room schoolhouse [bleep] on here from the ones that ventured into the sciences and college. While Earl was shining his Moroso chrome valve covers on 350 Vega, Slumlord was in GenChem

A quick and dirty conversion for C to F is to double C and add 32 to get F. The further from freezing the more inaccurate it gets as you can see in your temp chart, but it's ofttimes close enough for a ballpark estimation.

The calculator on PCs and phones has a conversion function for length, weight, and volume.

Here is a downloadable unit converter called "Convert". I've use this for years, bot on my work desktop, and at home desktop. Handy as heck.

https://appmeas.co.uk/resources/free-engineering-unit-conversion-calculator/

The convertors are handy for many things. Like concrete volumes and square area w/thickness

But…should be in most dude’s heads unless they sold life insurance and watched jimmy stewart movies their whole life 😃

At my age, something that I use a few times a year isn't going to stay in my head long.

Not so cut and dried. I think in thou and measure in mm, I think in lbs and weigh in kg...I travel in km and sweat litres in Celsius.


I shoot in yards and adjust in inches...rain falls in inches for everyone over fifty and mils for everyone under.

If you really want to get screwed around go buy a length of 2x4...what you will get is 45x90. And bolts are still available here with imperial heads and metric threads.


Solution...metrinch, and ignore the rest as the young bastards don't know what you are talking about and the old ones cannot remember anyway.

That looks to be a good one. Thanks.

I thought in kilometers while in 'Nam because that's what the maps used. Not so much since.

Temperature? I'm old enough that we were taught Centigrade, not Celcius. All I need to remember now is the jingle "Thirty's hot and twenty's nice. Ten is chilly and zero's ice."

The one that baffles me is energy/force. In rockets, pounds of thrust makes perfect sense to me. Rocket weighs X and so needs X+ to fly. Simple. Kilonewtons means zip to me.

I can convert when I have to. I can machine and thread metric if I have to but it is problematic because there's no metric support over here. You can't buy matric metal stock or taps and dies. Metric isn't so standardized from one country to the other. I have in my possession a metric tap that's a true bastard. It is neither metric not imperial. If you are born and taught using one system it's natural to you and that goes both ways.

What's the tap?

I have been told no matter how many languages you speak, you will always do math in your native language and then convert to the language that is appropriate at the time. Asked a friend of mine from Holland and he said he never thought about it but that is what he does. He said you also curse in your native language.

I use the calculator app on my phone. Gives you any conversion you need. Area, length, temp, volume....etc.

On my calculator app, it's the litte ruler icon.




keyboard input test

My career has had me use both, so I'm comfortable in both worlds. They're just units. That said it's MUCH easier to use decimal places in imperial than fractional measurements. Especially in programming. Therefore in programming I usually used metric as it was just orders of magnitude between units.

#define METER 1
#define KILOMETER "METER * 1e3"
#define CM "METER * 1e-2"
#define MM "METER * 1e-3"

I recently ordered some 5/16 square u-bolts that I couldn't find here. I thought they looked a little slim. They sent 7mm which is about 9/32. They were advertised as 5/16. I'd have returned them but I needed them and I was able to make it work. Cussed chinamen.

5/16 should be a bees dick under 8 mm...no wonder you weren't pleased.

I worked for and retired from TXDOT.

Many years ago we were required by Federal mandate to switch over to metric. We had hard and soft conversions. Which basically ment some things were in actual metric and some were rounded metric.

I remember converting old land surveys in Varas to English then to metric. The metric being almost the same number as the Vara was.

After several years of this somehow Metric was changed back English units. Sorta stupid because we were running pretty well with it.

Or you could just ask Google...

I have a “convert” app on my phone that covers most everything.

But a simple google search of “27.5 lbs to kilograms” will do it too.

But daily stuff I just know 454 grams per pound and 25.4 mm per inch and go from there.