Obviously you've never worked on a car or truck. American automobiles went metric decades ago, but you still find mixtures of SAE and metric. It is, in fact, a fustercluck.
Everything measurement wise, involving heat, for arc welding is done through amperage. Anything involving fuel gases and oxygen is through psi. I've been welding for 3 years in August, i don't know everything but from my own experiences there's not much conversion.
I believe if it ends in "caliber" or nothing when spoken it's American measured. .45 caliber, 50 caliber, 30-06, and if it ends in "mm" it's not. And I have no idea what's going on with shotgun gauges, only the the smaller the number, the larger the shell.
Gauge refers to the number of lead balls the diameter of the barrel that equal 1 pound. For example 12 lead balls the size of a 12 gauge barrel weigh 1 pound. Put another way gauge is a fraction of a pound; a pound of lead divided equally into twelve balls would be the same diameter as the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun. A 16 gauge would take 16 balls, a 20 gauge 20 balls. That's why the smaller the number the bigger the gun.
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· 8 years ago
All that knowledge and I still have no idea what's going on with shotgun shells. Thanks for trying though.
.410 is kinda a bastard child. That one is actually caliber, not gauge. In this case we're only talking about the diameter of the barrel and not a bullet, so the proper terminology is .410 bore. If it were designated as a shotgun gauge, I think I read somewhere it would be something like a 67 gauge. I'm not totally clear on why it was designed in a caliber size rather than the traditional gauge, but there have been a lot of calibers, gauges, and other nomenclature that have come and gone over the last 150 years.
The .410 cartridge itself is actually a .45 caliber diameter (although fairly longer) and a number of guns have been designed to shoot both .410 shot and .45 Long Colt - usually derringers or other smaller guns intended for self-defense.
American munitions are measured in caliber, not millimeters. Caliber is simply hundredths or thousandths of an inch. For example a 45 caliber bullet measures .45 of an inch (actually .451). A 223 caliber (ar15) measures .223 etc.
Why does everyone who bitches about the US not being 100% metric still use 24 hour per day time and 60 minutes per hour time, and not come up with something metric? Why do you use 360 degrees In a full circle and not some new units where there are 100? Or why 2*pi radians in a circle and not 10 metric bleep-bloops, since everything that is not based on 10 is so damn hard to figure out?
The .410 cartridge itself is actually a .45 caliber diameter (although fairly longer) and a number of guns have been designed to shoot both .410 shot and .45 Long Colt - usually derringers or other smaller guns intended for self-defense.