this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Wait until you learn how we measure thin steel thickness.
At this point I'm almost afraid to ask, but I guess I need to know. How do you measure thin steel thickness?
With the Sheet Metal Gauge!
It's the same as wire gauge, but the scale is different per material!
For steel
Pretty much anything larger than 1/8th of an inch (3.2mm), we just use the measurement (in inches).
Why? Because we don't have a common measurement unit smaller than an inch. There probably is one, but no one commonly uses it. Coming up with a gauge scale is actually easier than say .0123 inch thick. Say "12 gauge wire" and everyone (who knows about it), knows exactly what you're talking about.
Pretty much anything below 1/32 (0.8mm) of an inch, we'll switch to decimals. 0.0001 inch is valid with no common way to make that neater. No such thing as 1 mili-inch.
Remind me, what is the cost of living in Europe?
I thought you have "thou" (thousandth of an inch) for that?