I have seen the light! It's those French!

[Timbo]

...it cost £1 for two light bulbs at the local pound shop. For years now, since they enforced those stupid energy saving bulbs on us, I have been struggling to see what the hell I'm doing once night falls. My eyesight is not great...but fumbling around in the dark ain't much fun when you are on your own!   While I was away this last weekend three of those expensive light bulbs failed so I had to replace them, miracle of miracles with a proper light bulb in place I can actually see what I'm doing when I turn the lights on.

 

Now I know Brussels is not in France...but I do blame the French for all my current woes...I'm sick to death of having to convert Imperial to Metric and back again while working on Royal Tudor. You would have thought thee French would have learned not to trust the metric when it cost them Quatre Bras and the confusion over moving troops over an Imperial mile and a metric mile.

 

Even when I buy my tobacco I'm starting to get a little antsy.

"Half an ounce of Cherry Virginia please!"
"Is that 12.5 grammes?" asks the shop assistant.

"How tall are you?" I ask.

"Five foot, eight." comes the puzzled reply.
"In that case it's half an ounce."

 

So my current quandary...I need some half inch ply for a new bulkhead. Doug and I measured it...but is it 15mm or 12.7 and why do they only sell it in 18mm? Come on I thought we won at Waterloo?

[MauriceMynah]

Quite some time ago there was a friend of mine who was restoring a riverside mill near here. He went into the woodyard and said to the young lad behind the counter...

"I'd like 1000 feet of two by one please, to be delivered"

"We sell wood by the metre  these days sir" came the reply.

"Well, I buy it by the foot" my friend said, walking out!

[BroadScot]

Tim,

 

Memories are flooding back to the days of young apprentices straight from school, who had been taught in metric, where around 1970 we used both measures in the electrical trade, 25mm = 1" etc etc. Cable was in metric and Brittish Imperial. Our fluorescent lamps started to shrink from 40 or 60 watt to 38 and 58 watt but told no loss of lumins, aye right, not! Oh and metric cable was a nightmare to work with in very cold conditions!

 

So yes, I agree with you completely, it was Brussels, or the French to blame. Now then, where is my foot rule???

 

Iain.

[grendel]

to this day my metric ruler is still called my stick of inches. compact flourescents are as bright as the old bulbs - eventually, after they have warmed up. it was the delay between switching them on that always got me. flick the light switch, stride into the room, trip over the cat just as the dim light appeared. we now use LED bulbs at a lot less wattage for the light output, but these bulbs have a narrower cone of light than incandescents did. for some applications this is ok, all the 40w spotlights in the kitchen are now LED, are brighter than before and what used to be 8x 40W is now LED at a total 40W for the lot.

if your choice is 15mm ply  or 12.7mm then 12.7mm is the old fashioned 1/2 inch - that said I remember when you used to by plywood, by the number of ply's

3 ply (or about 1/8") 5 ply (about 1/4") 9 ply (about 1/2")

nowadays that's all gone by the wayside, as plywood is two thin layers of ply with one or a few layers of 'wood' between, the stuff between is not even decent wood, it has gaps and such.

18mm is the old 3/4" ply (13 ply) equivalent.

Grendel

[stumpy]

Timbo re. lamps: I've found the trick when you go into a proper hardware shop (not a DIY barn) is tell the guy in a brown warehouse coat they're for lighting a garage/workshop pit. Still legal to use incandescents apparently!

[ExSurveyor]

Stumpy, bulbs go in cars and boats, lamps go in houses. You need to ask for Rough Service Lamps, these are still available and are used by the building industry, ( at the moment )

Just make sure when you ask for some Rough Service, you are in a lamp shop, not around the back of the Town hall

[grendel]

the reason for that is flourescents flicker at 50Hz, if you are running a motorised item and it is rotating at 50hz or a multiple of 50hz, it can appear stationary, thus you can reach out to the stationary object and get mauled because it is really turning. incandescents take time to warm and cool so dont flicker as such, so rotating machinery still can be seen to rotate.

you should still be able to get 100 and 150W bulbs for this too.

I still have my floodlight and some spare edison screw 400W bulbs for it too (the bulbs are about 5" diameter too.

Grendel

[JimG]

It'll always be feet and inches for me. Thank goodness the boat hire companies still use them for their boat dimensions.

[ExSurveyor]

Blimey Grendal,

400w ES lamps, I remember seeing those in the museum when I worked for Osram GEC nearly 40 years ago.

Big old factory in Oldham used to knock out huge numbers of incandescent lamps for export around the world. I expect the factory has gone now as we import lamps from Johnny foreigner now. :-(

[grendel]

I believe they may be osram bulbs, when I got the light was probably 25 years back, and it certainly wasn't new, nor were the bulbs, it had been sitting in an abandoned hut in a substation for about 10 years before that.

Grendel

[BroadScot]

Clears my throat coff coff...Bulbs grow in the ground  Lamps light up the world, so I was told at day release college in 19canteen well 1964

 

Iain

 

p.s. Fluorescent lamps required to have a ballast/choke unit a condenser/capacitor so many MFUs usually 7.2

and that daft starter switch of varying wattages, but, funny enough the Atlas/Osram 50watt Arrowslim fitting would only light with the exact 50watt starter. Later quickstart Chokes. Not a lot of people know that

 

Iain.

[SteveO]

I trained as a scientist and everything below half a pint, I measure in ccs. For linear measurements, anything below about a quarter of an inch, I measure in mm, for weights, everything below an ounce I measure in g. For everything else, it has to be good old imperial system. Napoleon had a lot to answer for!

 

If you can't get on with fluorescents or LED lamps, the Rough Service incandescents are a good idea. Roys of Wroxham DIY sells them.  At home, we tend to use the low energy lamps for most things because we have just too many lights to be able to afford to use incandescent bulbs.  My biggest irritation is that few of the "new" lamps work properly with the old light fittings and that there are very few affordable light fittings made for low energy lamps.

 

 

Steve

[Mouldy]

I do wonder how we teach measurements at school these days, we buy timber by the metre and drive in miles, we buy fuel by the litre, but beer in pints. Confusing, I think so.

It is hard enough to learn one system of weights and measures, but having to learn two . . . .

Surely, it is about time that we elected to use one system and although I resent the EU's intrusion into many issues that involve us and our country, in this instance perhaps converting to metric is best.

I learned to use imperial measurements at school and like many of us, am familiar with the system.

Do we really need to know that there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 22 yards in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong, 8 furlongs (or 1760 yards or 5280 feet) in a mile, when the metric system is all based on multiples of 10?

Contentious, perhaps and I am a bit old fashioned too, but we coped when we changed from pounds, shillings and pennies to pounds and pence, so why not from imperial measurement to metric?