^ someone gave me one for xmas. I haven't tried it yet either but it's in my drill bag. I'm curious how many pounds of torque it can handle. I could find out with my torque wrench and then toss when it fails 😃

I've got a set of my Dad's Craftsman drill bits in machinist sizes like 32nd's and 64th's. So how do machinists deal with this?

Probably conversion charts in Glover's "Pocket Ref" book. I bought a copy years ago.
An amazing amount of info in one little paperback. I also have "Auto Ref"...both good books for car guys to keep handy.

Don’t forget that we machinists also have number and letter sized drills, which still don’t cover metric sizes in some cases.

Yes please to the metric conversion. I started out driving Nissan, Toyota, and racing Honda Yamaha motorcycles so 90% of my tools are already metric. I do have a minimum supply of American for those pesky projects that require it but today the cars are Porsche, Lexus, M Benz. We don't need no stinking 15/16ths socket or box wrench.

I'd happily trade a few American sockets for a spare 10mm. ;)

Sorry Cajun...I want to keep my 10mm sockets...although my 3/8" sockets would also work.

But now...here we go...a test of the remarkable gator grip...making all other sockets null & void?

<iframe width="1268" height="713" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kZdhnDmr0w4" title="Testing the World's Most Hated Tool" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

You know that your imperial sockets will fit metric nuts and bolts if you hit them hard enough with a hammer?

Do 3/8" sockets go missing as often as 10mm sockets do :confused:

Very interesting question, glad you asked.
The meter is the perimeter of the earth divided by 40M.
French dude came up with it around 17xx.
Crazy part is a lot of ancient structures were built using the same standard of measurements; Puma Punku, Giza pyramids, etc... from a time when they could not have known the earths' perimeter, and supposedly didn't have contact with each other.
These cultures also thrived thousands of years apart.
Probably just a coincidence!

That's probably a fun "fact" to quote, but, I think, it's pure poop. Ancient Egypt's length measurements were all based on body parts, and weren't remotely base-10 (and none were close to a meter). They did have sophisticated measurements that included length, volume, etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_units_of_measurement

Yup, and that is exactly my point.
Ancient Egypt used an entirely different measurement standard.
However, when the great pyramid (and others) were studied, the meter was found to be the measurement standard used.
Also Pie and the golden ratio were used throughout the structure.
The pyramid was built with direct ratios to the earths measurements.
Absolutely mind blowing, for those with open minds.

For me it's the 7/16". Dunno why, but everytime I need it...

(and, no, I don't know where my 10mm socket(s) are either)

On a semi-serious note - do young people care? I only really seem to see folks my parents' age (born 1948-1950) grumbling about it. Now my machinist/amateur engineer grandfather (1918 r.i.p.) could rant for gin-fueled hours on the evils of the metric system. That was a hoot!

The rest of us just make that furrowed-brow face and maybe growl when we have to go back and get something from the other system. There are bigger struggles in life...

If they were built using measurements of cubits, etc..., how can we say that the meter was the standard used? My guess is that proportions worked out conveniently, and someone really wanted meters to be associated, so they were able to back into it. When you want 2 things to be related that aren't, it's often possible to figure a way even though the things were never intentionally, directly related.

no it isnt.

and no they didnt.

Nope.

The meter was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the meter was redefined in terms of a prototype meter bar (the actual bar used was changed in 1889). In 1960, the meter was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that the meter is a measure of proper length. From 1983 until 2019, the meter was formally defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458th of a second. After the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, this definition was rephrased to include the definition of a second in terms of the caesium frequency.

So yea, the distance from the equator to the pole is just 1/4th the distance around the Earth, but the ancient Egyptians had no clue about that anymore than the speed of light or how to measure 1/299792458th of a second. It is impossible to measure to exact spot of the equator, or the pole. They are just kinda sorta known and estimated to "yep right about there" anyway.

I honestly think much of the resistance of the metric system is our carryover of the British way of thinking, and the hate of anything French. In great Brittan you will never find "French Fries" (chips) on a menu, or French toast (called egg toast) . They refuse to acknowledge the French for anything positive to this day after a couple of centuries of war with them.

France saved our butts in the revolutionary with their navy fighting the Royal Navy. We have since saved their butts in WW1 and WW2 so they still "owe us one" and they are not known to be over friendly to American tourists to this day.

I suspect that if the Meter was invented in Great Brittan or the USA we would have changed long ago. In the end, it is just a standard unit of measure, just an arbitrary unit. If someday in the future we meet actual extraterrestrials we can be sure they will not be using the meter as their basis of measuring distance or the second as the basis of time measurement.

Maybe it was at one time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

And because there's always doubt in wiki-anything.
https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/meter

thank you for proving my point.

the meter is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.

its not based on the earth, because the earth is not actually round, and its not actually constant. vacuums, and the speed of light are. a second is also defined atomically at this point:

The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.

finding a true definition of mass has been a struggle, but i believe they claim now to know the exact number of silicon atoms to comprise a kilogram.

the old system they had for the kilogram was not ... accurate.

using distance, mass, and time you can define all other units. including all the imperial units which are now defined from the SI units. at this point we are all using scalars of those originally defined units.

But it absolutely WAS based on the earth at one time. Which is what I said. I'm assuming you get that "was" is past tense and what "was" and "past tense" means.

You are a grumpy old pedant.

this was the claim: The meter is the perimeter of the earth divided by 40M.

it is false.

I hope so. Don’t recall ever losing a .39” socket.

Most of the big steel for our antennas is built in Estonia. We’ve still been engineering our designs in imperial and then of course new fab drawings have to be created in metric because of the slightly different material sizing.

Complete pain.