Mr. Recovery's folding ruler

[raymond]

Fail to see how this could be a consistent and uniform unit of measure, considering your thumb has been flattened and swollen numerous times from being hit with a hammer.

WOW...I really like those rulers . Normally I just use my thumb....hold it up and eyeball it. Its good ! SEABEE

[raymond]

BTW Rick, I've never seen a ruler that folds that way. Do you know what it's intended use was?

[rickf]

If you are talking about the wooden one I posted then no, I don't. I bought it as part of a box of machinist tools. There were a couple dial gauges and these rulers. I was interested in the gauges so these were extra.Most machinist tools were steel so I don't think it was specifically for that but it may have been a favorite of the machinist who owned this lot.

[Surveyor]

..Such as why do they use 10'ts of an inch on the rod?

That's actually tenths/hundredths of a foot on the level rod shown in the picture. Adding and subtracting in a tenths/hundredths base system versus fractions of an inch 8ths, 32nds, etc. was easier on the brain and quicker in the field.

Where did the "chain" measurement come from?

Gunter's chain was from an english mathmatician... from the wiki - Gunter's chain reconciled two seemingly incompatible systems: the traditional English land measurements, based on the number four, and decimals based on the number 10. Since an acre measured 10 square chains (or 100,000 square links) in Gunter's system, the entire process of land measurement could be computed using measurements in links, and then converted to acres by dividing the results by 100,000.

A quarter of a chain is 16.5' or one rod. The unit of measure that pipeline and a lot of utility right-of-ways are paid for to this day.

"Good enough for government work" phrase is said to come from the old surveyors of the Public Land Survey System... if the section closed within the right amount of links it was good enough and you could move on to the next.

All to make it easier for us Jacka$$es in the field.

[SEABEE62]

Dang....RickF has been reading the Encyclopaedia again. Funny that this was what I had been offered for a job as a rodman during my summer break while in college....I didn't want to climb thur the bushes, ditches, jungle type terrain....worked as a carpenter instead, then joined the SEABEE, and there I was...back in the bush ! I had also taken a furlough too when I was in the service...not long enough tho. SEABEE

[rickf]

Well, I was in the SOUTH-east, Down in Surveyors area a lot and it was more swamp and gators than brush. We always had an extra man with a rifle to warn you about a gator in the water when you were standing in the middle of a swamp up to your chest in mud. Those guys loved to see how scared you were, they would not tell you until the gator was already in the water. They found out that I was not the type to scare easily and I also understood gators. If you did not move they did not attack. But once they moved off I moved pretty damn quickly and I told the guy with the gun he better shoot me or run because I was going to beat him to death with that rod!!!!

[Surveyor]

About 30 years back, took a friend water skiing/hydro-sliding in the local bayou. He fell off the hydro-slide right as we passed up an old wharf with a couple of big ones getting some sun. As they ran and hit the water like a couple of crocodiles from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, that's the only time I've seen someone try to stand straight up on a hydro-slide not under tow and almost accomplish the task.

That Mariner engine always had carb problems after sitting over the winter. Occasionally had to have someone bend over and back into the back compartment and pump the gas bulb a few times. We always liked to have a few girls (preferably in bikinis) with us in case the engine was fuel starved. When dad asked how the boat was running I always said it was running just fine.