Mounting to gatorboard

[bill t.]

Gatorfoam 3/16", Mighty Core 1/4".  Otherwise essentially the same characteristics.  I prefer Gatorfoam because I install my mounted prints in frames with relatively shallow rabbet depths, the slightly thinner Gatorfoam gives me more leeway to drive Fletcher Points, which are the flat nails that hold the mounted print in the frame.

Oh, Mighty Core is a little cheaper.

PS, make that 4/16" rather than 1/4".  Reducing fractions is ridiculous, busy work for grade school kids.  In my shop, it's strictly inches and sixteenths of an inch.  "How long is that print?"  "It's 4-8" comes the reply.  Pronounced "four dash eight."  Meaning 4 and 8/16, or 4 and 1/2 for second graders.  It's almost as good as the metric system.  OK, so if you need 13/32, that's 6+ sixteenths.

[Peter McLennan]

It's almost as good as the metric system.

No. 

It's not.

[bill t.]

The metric system centers around counting on your fingers.  Base 16 would have been the optimal choice for these modern times, uniting man and machine with a common way of representing numbers.

When one is given the registration passcode "0123 4567 89ab cdef" or when a computer crash screen delivers similar chicken scratches, we are viewing base 16 (or hexadecimcal) numbers in all their enlightened beauty.  Computers do not waste time fooling around with a brain dead number system, and often laugh at us behind our base 10 backs.  Blame Bishop Wilkins.

So my take on this is, until something a lot better than that silly base 10 metric system comes along, I'll stick with imperial thereby avoiding the replacement of a lot of tape measures, cutting tools, and rulers.  And the 3 sections on my right middle finger are exactly 1" long and immediately available for approximate measurements although discretion is advised in public places.

TUTORIAL: How to divide a fractional measurement in two.

Suppose your tape measure reads 47 and 3/16 inches.  Quick, whats half of that?  You often need to know that for framing.

1. Find the next lowest EVEN, whole inch number, in this case 46.  Don't worry about the fractions yet.

2. Now represent the remaining distance in sixteenths, in this case 19/16.  46 and 19/16 is the same as 47 and 3/16.

3. Halve 46 to get 23.

4. Halve 19 to get 9+.

5. The answer is, 23 inches and 9+ sixteenths.

I figured that out all by myself.

Machiavellian mental conversions of this type will undoubtedly extend the useful life of my brain another 10 years, beyond what I would get from merely slamming some soulless metric number into a calculator.  You gotta have the right outlook.  Consider that Newton used to do completely pointless and very complex long divisions for the simple pleasure of it, and you begin to understand.  I wonder when they're going to dig him up to see if he had the MAOA gene mutation, but that's another story.

[framah]

Suppose your tape measure reads 47 and 3/16 inches.  Quick, whats half of that?  You often need to know that for framing.

No, no you don't. 

[bill t.]

No, no you don't.  

Yes, yes you do!  If you're adding vertical center braces to the backs of frames more than 5 feet wide in a very dry climate.  1/2" x 1/16" x 72" strips of aluminum from Lowes, cut to a length 1" less than the vertical dimension, punch a hole 1/4" in from each end, attach with #8 x 3/4" lathe screws.  Bye bye warping sagging moulding!  And fractions galore!

[framah]

Ok... Yes, Yes you do!!! (once in a blue moon!) 

Of course, you could just do what I do and add a wire vertically on the frame. I use the aircraft wire and swaging sleeves system of wiring a frame instead of that old braided wire junk.  No intricate measuring, just snug it up and swage it and it stays.

[dgberg]

Boy could I tell you all kinds of stories about tape reading.
One of my favorite questions for new hires in my cabinet shop was "can you read a tape"
The answer was of course always yes. Then I pull out the tape and have them measure a board and you could not believe some of the fumbling around counting the little lines to come up with a number.
This little test held more weight then you can imagine.

[bill t.]

I overheard a gallery owner ask an applicant what size a particular piece was.  "Ummm, it's kinda mediumish."  Don't know if she got the job.  Not a bad answer, actually, at least she correctly placed the piece in the overall spectrum of sizes, and she didn't get flustered.

And who else hates tape measures where every single 1/16, or even 1/32 on an inch is labeled in text on the tape?  Totally unusable!  The measurements on my Phaedra miter fence is broken down into 1/64ths below about 10 inches.  Extremely difficult to use!

[Justan]

I don’t trust tape measures for critical measurements. If you use the same one, the tang becomes looser over time and can become off by an intolerable amount in a fairly short time span. Even worse, the tang is not consistent from tape to tape and the problem gets even worse because almost everyone has several tape measures in the shop or tool kit.

[Peter McLennan]

And who else hates tape measures where every single 1/16, or even 1/32 on an inch is labeled in text on the tape? 

Yup.  Me.  My time on a big DeWalt chop saw when I was building my house cured me of those tapes forevah.



At Lowe's once, I saw a tape that auto locked when you pulled it out and you clicked the button to retract it.  Seemed like a good idea at the time. 

WRONG.  It sits unused, forlorn, alone.

[Ian99]

Regarding metric vs imperial measure:

1.   Particularly for Justan, the tangs do get loose so the standard method is to measure from the 1” mark. The challenge becomes in remembering to allow for the extra inch;

2.   In woodwork, if you have a metal rule engraved with anything finer than 1/16 it is usually used for a nail file;

3.   A quote I will always remember came from the CEO of a large US corporation who happened to come from Oklahoma. He was the keynote speaker at a convention in Canada. He said  “Ah don’t know about these Killo-meters, where ah come from we use White Man’s Measure”.

[jferrari]

the tangs do get loose so the standard method is to measure from the 1” mark.

The tangs are supposed to be "loose" as to allow for inside and outside measurement. The amount of travel is equal to the thickness of the tang. If you never want to perform an inside measurement then just peen the rivets down when the tang is in the extended position. If your tangs are truly getting loose - get a Stanley. Keep in mind the days when we had to use folding rules!

[wtlloyd]

30 year Pro cabinet maker here.

Switched to metric 20 years ago because, hey, all the hardware is metric!

But more to the point - in Inch standard, I can eyeball to 1/32" pretty easily (1/2 of 1/16" markings, that is, I aim between the marks)

1/2 of millimeter marking is equivalent to 1/50th of an inch.

Metric FTW...

Super useful information in this thread by the way, thanks all!

[bill t.]

Dang those tangs!  I have always used the "burn 10 inches" technique rather than the more treacherous "burn 1 inch" method.  If I measure a 20" side and forget to subtract a burned inch, that's a subtle difference that could slip by when I go to cut a matte or frame.  However, if I forget to subtract a burned 10", that's an obvious, easily picked up discrepancy.  So for flat art I always start measuring from the 10" mark, even if that does allow base 10 to sneak into my workflow.

[tektrader]

Hmmm  I was born in 1960 when Australia was Imperial for everything. I started school and learnt feet, inches, gallons and yards for the first 5 years. Then we changed to the METRIC system. As a consequence I tend to use both to some extent.

Anyone who thinks the Imperial system is superior is living in a dream land. Sooner the US wakes up the better. Even NASA saw the light........ But of course the 95% of the rest of the world who use the METRIC system. What would we know? LOL

[bill t.]

In fact, the US is almost the only bi-measurement country on Earth, after those guys up North caved in so easily.  Milk in gallons, Coca-Cola in liters, etc.  Nobody complains.

I still think the 12 units per foot thing is rather beautiful.  How nicely it subdivides: 3 x 4, 4 x 3, 2 x 6, etc.  Versus 3 x 3.3333333333..., 4 x 2.5, 6 x 1.6666666666....  etc which is highly irrational.  An Imperial system re-configured to base 16 would be a mathematically far superior system to one based on counting on one's fingers, and we could have that with nothing more than looking at 1/16 inches in a fresh light. Base 10 is exceptional only for failing to be base 16 while revolution was still possible.

Would be so nice if people would only think of 1/16ths of an inch as proper numbers in themselves, and drop pointless fractional reductions to least common denominators.  Would be much like centimeters and millimeters, except using a superior number base.  A mile of 3200 or 6400 feet would divide up so much more rationally into useful subsections than kilometers.  100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200... sound familiar?  All perfectly nice base 16-like progressions, which would be far more elegant expressed in hex.

[huguito]

What about mounting to Gatorboard?

[Justan]

map of countries not officially using the Metric System  

http://www.boredpanda.com/fun-maps-they-didnt-teach-you-in-school/?image_id=fun-maps-38.jpg

from Maps they didn’t teach you in school

http://www.boredpanda.com/fun-maps-they-didnt-teach-you-in-school/

[bill t.]

What about mounting to Gatorboard?

Just as imperial adjustable wrenches outperform metric adjustable wrenches, so do prints mounted to Gatorfoam cut with imperial straightedges adhere better than their metric counterparts.

[Bill Koenig]

I've been a machinist for the last 35 years, working with everyday tolerances as small as +/- 0.001" and at times as small +/- 0.0001 inches.
To this day, I still convert almost everything metric, to inches.
Early in my apprenticeship one of the older journeyman machinists told me the following.
A trained human eye can resolve about +/- 0.005 of a inch. Take that tape measure and a precision steel rule, looking squarely over the lines, bend that tang until the lines on the tape match the lines on the precision steel rule, you now have a calibrated tape measure.