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I have given you the reason that colonial America purposely chose to use non-metric for some purposes and metric for others. It’s because there are more whole divisors in the base 12 system. This is not something you need to berate me for sharing.
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It’s wonderful that you are good at math, I am happy for you. I am not good at math and personally find that using SAE for construction helps people like me do a better job. I prefer actual correctness rather than mathematically calculating what level of approximation will not result in a 13mm gap on the last course supported by a given height of framing. You can berate me for that if you wish, but I have done it both ways.
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You are confused about my earlier post. This is no doubt my fault. When I said “Tell me the whole number corresponding to ten divided by three without using fractions” this was intended to illustrate that no such number exists. One third of ten is not a whole number; one third of a foot is four inches. I thought perhaps you were pretending not to understand, my apologies.
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Off topic, but 2x4 lumber used to be 2x4. During World War II, US lumber became “nominal” and it’s been shrinking ever since. I have 1926 2x4s that are two or three times the weight of modern 2x4s, and have corners you could practically shave with, at exactly 2x4 inches. I have 2x4s from the 1960s that are noticeably and measurably larger than 1976 2x4s, which are in turn larger than what you find at Home Despot today (and all these have rounded corners). When working on older homes, I routinely buy larger lumber and rip it down to match the existing studs.
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