(replying to the wish for a name for 2.4m; edited out): Why for the 2.4m, but not the 1.8m or the 3.6m? Surely it makes just as much sense to refer to it as the "two point four" as anything else?
A piece of 2" x 4" timber is still referred to as "2 by 4" in the UK, except it now measures 50mm x 100mm (actual conversion is 50.8mm x 101.6mm, the difference being moot when building scale is taken into account)
Perhaps not to you, but most folk I know (in the UK) aren't quite so hung up about it. I'll sometimes refer to a half-liter as a pint, or a liter as a "couple of pints", or a meter as a yard.
Though the pint is by far the stupidest unit. Why on earth wasn't it standardised at 500ml? It would have fixed pints, quarts and gallons all in one go!
I know, you can think up immediate objections, but having 568ml to the pint and 4.546 litres to the gallon, is just wrong!
Nah, I just couldn't picture anyone doing woodwork in hundreds or thousands of units (now, where did I get that idea...?), or dividing base 10 units. Since it sounds like wood is sold and worked in base 12, I'd use metric no problem. But that makes the difference between imperial and metric pretty arbitrary, doesn't it?
I've actually worked in the construction industry in New Zealand, which was thoroughly metric when I was building houses ~10 years ago.
And we did everything in mm, standardised timber was "100x50" - mm was assumed, which was close to 2x4 Inches.
(Actually, I think the finished standardised timber is smaller than 100mmx50mm, but for some reason was still called 100x50)
sheets of Gib plaster (Drywall?) were 1200x3600,(possibly 1600x.. I don't remember) sometimes bigger. rooms had 2400mm or 3600mm stud heights.
90mm nails were used to assemble the house frames, and 50mm nails were used when the 90mm nails would have been excessive.
We only really used Meters when we were being vague - "Go about a meter further out!" and usually converted to mm when we were actually cutting or fastening something. I never poured any concrete myself, but I'm pretty sure the foundation boxing would have been measured out to the mm, even over 10s of meters of distance.
If I ever gave someone a measurement in cm I'd get told "Only Dressmakers user centimeters!" I don't think I ever used feet, and I only ever used inches when discussing lumber, and would always be told to use metric.
