Reading a tape measure

What's going on, everybody? It's good to be back with you once again. It's Mike, just sharing some helpful tips and hints for you beginners out there. And, you know, even for you veterans, every now and then we find something a little bit helpful. So I am happy to be here to bring you a little lesson on reading a tape measure. So this was requested by one of our friends on the coalition webpage for HVA Chicks. If you guys are not watching or not a part of the HVA Chicks Coalition, I would invite you to go on Facebook, look up HVA-Chicks, and it will come up to the group webpage. A lot of good learning and information there. So you are a tech in the field and you're getting into learning how to cut sheet metal, learning how to make accurate cuts and measures. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that you understand how to read a tape measure. A tape measure is simply a way that we can make accurate cuts So that we can have our sheet metal pieces fit exactly the way that we measured. So in order to understand a tape measure, it's really necessary for us to understand fractions. Okay? So a fraction is a part of a whole. Okay? If you have one thing— okay, one— let's say one pie. Okay? So that is a whole, right? But if me and you are out to dinner, we decide to get dessert, um, you know, we decide we're going to share that pie, then we are basically delving into the realm of fractions. So we have each gotten a half of a pie. It is still 1 pie, but we are each getting 1/2, right? So This may seem rather elementary to you, but the truth is that this is where fractions get a little bit— and tape measuring can get a little confusing because we start to forget where we are in line of the fractions. So when we're using our tape measurer, we'll usually have— so this is the end of your tape measure, right? Okay. So we're usually going to have— so this is 1 inch, right? We're going to call this 1 inch. This is the 0. All right? So right here in the middle, you have that half. Okay? And that's usually going to be your longest line is going to be your half. Okay? So each division, basically each smaller line, is basically going to be doubling that. So you got to understand that each one of these lines is your denominator. So that's halves. Okay? So halves are the biggest line because there are only 2 parts to the halves in the 1 inch. All right? Your denominator is your bottom number in your fractions. Okay? So if you divide that in half again, okay, now you've got quarters. All right? So this is going to be your 1/4 line, and this is going to be your 3/4 line. Well, why isn't there a 2/4 line? Because with fractions, you always want to divide back down until you get to the— to where you can't divide anymore. 2/4 is the same as 1/2. See, so if you divided two quarters by two, you would get one half. They are the exact same thing. This is why you have one quarter, one half, three quarters. But you could also say one quarter, two quarters, three quarters, and then over here would be four quarters, which would be one whole. All right, so going further, if we were to Divide this even more into half. Now we get the eighths, right? It's because now we have 8 pieces of that 1 inch. Your denominator is now 8. All right? So you have 1/8. OK? We don't say 2/8 because, again, that's a quarter inch. OK? We have 3/8. 3/8. Okay, so 1/8, 1/4 inch, 3/8, 1/2, and so on and so forth. Well, now here's where it gets a little tricky, and you know, I will admit when I was younger, anything over an 1/8, my eye just didn't want to acknowledge that it existed. But you know what, sometimes you You might have to shave off 1/16 of an inch in order to make your transition fit. So when we delve even smaller into pieces of that pie, we have got the 1/16. So now your denominator is the 1/16. So how do we remember which is the numerator, the top number, and which is the denominator, the bottom number? Well, Remember, so a lot of us went to church as kids. Some of us stopped. And, you know, when you go to church, there are a lot of different denominations, okay? So I grew up pretty well Catholic. A buddy of mine was Baptist. We had a buddy who was Methodist. You know, those are different denominations or different types, right? So the denominator Is the type of fraction. OK? So the numerator is the number of fractions. So in this case, if we had 3/16, OK, the numerator is 3. How many 16ths? There are 3 of them. 3 of what? 3 of the 16ths. So 3 of the type. The type is the denominator. So again, as we go on, In here, we don't— we would go 1/16. We don't go 2/16 because that's— because what's— what is 2— excuse me, sorry. If we did 2/16, well, we know that's not right because if we divide 2 and 16 in half, we get 1/8. So we don't read that as 2/16. We read it as 1/8. Now, if you're counting, so let's say you got to go to the 3/16 line, okay, if you've got a piece of sheet metal that you're cutting to 3/16, so you'd go 1, 2, 3/16 as you're counting because that helps you keep track of it. But just for the sake of writing down our measurements, we don't write down 2/16, we write down 1/8. Then we go to 3/16. Okay, 4/16. Do we do that? No, because if we divide that in half, that's going to be 2/8. Well, okay, but if we divide that again, that's going to be 1/4. So we actually say 1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4. Quarter. So I know that this can get confusing, and as we continue to go even smaller, there are some tape measures that will go to the 32nds. I don't know whether there's such a thing as a tape measure that goes to 64ths. If there is, please let me know because I've never heard of it. But, um, you know, there are some precision jobs that might require that level of a small measurement. So, but typically in most applications in HVAC, we're gonna go to about the 1/16th is generally where we're gonna cut our sheet metal transitions, especially, uh, in residential. I've— yeah, I can't say that I've ever really, that I can think, needed to measure anything smaller than a 1/16th. But, you know, the one key that I can tell you to mastering using your tape measure Is practice. So I've always said it, there's nothing in this trade that you can't master by just doing it over and over and over again. So just keep practicing. Use your tape measure, measure everything that you can find. Measure your kids, you know, the, the radius around their head. Measure, you know, your dining room table and measure your, uh, your window panes. Measure the, the window sash versus the window pane. You know, measure every dang blasted thing you can find. Measure your cat from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. You know, get out there and practice using your tape measure because the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll get with fractions and the better able you'll be to measure accurately. So again, it's just a matter of remembering your fractions, understanding the difference between the numerator and the denominator. And also remembering that what these lines represent. So you've got your halves. You've got your quarters. You've got your eighths. And you've got your sixteenths. OK? So generally, the shorter the line, the smaller the denominator. I hope that helps. Thanks for suggesting that as a lesson topic. If anybody has any other suggestions or topics of things that they would like to learn more about, don't hesitate to let me know. Thank you. In the meantime, I'm just happy that you could, uh, could join me today. Uh, feel free to hit that like button and subscribe. Otherwise, this is Mike, uh, happy to help you out with learning some new things, some things to help you along, and maybe some things to pass along to others. Thank you again, and bye for now. Bye.