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I have had many Europeans, Canadians and other non-American machinist and even some engineers try to convince me that the metric system is inherently more accurate simply because it is a base ten system. While this fact may make memorization of units divisions simple, it does not make it any more or less accurate.

In fact it really does not matter what unit of measure you use. One is just as accurate as the next. The only thing that determines accuracy is the the number of divisions of the base unit of measure you are willing to measure to.

A machinist can be just as accurate with one unit as any other be cause all units can be carried out to 10th, 100th, 1000ths and so on and so on

Let say I invent a new unit of measure called "KRUTONS". and let say 1 Krutons is equal to 1.9787 inches. Now for some reason I need to know the inch equivalency of 36.953 Krutons in inches to the nearest thousandths of an inch.

36.953 x 1.9787= 73.118901 (exact inch decimal equivalent)

and expressed in the nearest thousandths of an inch would be 73.119

Some will say "see the inch equivalent is not as accurate and the Kruton because the the actual inch equivalency can not be expressed in 3 decimal places."

That is not an accuracy issue, rather a mater required or appointed tolerance (a point in which the difference in further unit division is inconsequential to the task at hand.)

Famously, the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge over the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge is 365 Smoots and one ear long. The Smoot refers to the height of a pledge in one of the MIT frats who, it is said, was laid end to end while intoxicated for the original measurment. The frat now has a 'standard Smoot' bar, and the pledges resurvey and mark the bridge once a year. Joggers, I'm told, find the markers quite reassuring in a fog.

I like to work in "Skoshes"

So tell us, Robbie, how do you convert between skoshes (from the Japanese sukoshi or skoshi), metric and English?

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Isn't a "skosh" a universal measurement?

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Waddy

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