What are some lesser known items or tricks in your profession that most people don’t know about?
For me one thing would be Thrift drain cleaner. I was having issues with my drains being clogged and nothing really worked, but looking around on forums and advice from plumbers lead me to Thrift and now my drains work great.
You can actually convert ALL the inch values to millimetres with maths!
No. There are some tool sizes that simply will not fit. Especially if the bolt and tool are made to the correct tolerances.
The closest measurement to 1/4" is 6mm but it will simply not fit because 1/4" is 6.35mm. theres a big enough difference between the metric measurement and that you can’t use it.
Yes, if you convert inches to millimetres with maths it will indeed tell you that 1/4" is 6.35 mm …
You can come up with an equivalent number, but if the mm side of the equation is not a whole number, then it’s not useful.
Not to partially side with the other guy but I have indeed gotten sets with a 6.3mm, or at least labelled as that, socket. The elusive 12.7 remains to be found.
This is interesting! Is it an imperial socket labeled in metric? Is it a specialty socket?
I never actually measured to see but if I find one soon I’ll report back. Until then here’s this one for sale.
I don’t think you understand what everyone else is talking about so I’ll tell you instead of piling on.
They’re talking about socket sizes for nuts/bolts. In the US we have fractional inch socket sizes (1/4", 1/2", etc) whereas metric sockets are sized by full millimeters.
So while you are correct in saying you can convert all inch values to millimeter values, you can’t always use a metric wrench on an imperial bolt, or vice versa. For example, a 6mm wrench will be slightly too small for a 1/4" bolt, and a 7mm will be slightly too large.
3/4" and 19mm just happen to be close enough to exactly the same that you can use both wrenches on either size bolt.