Weight of canvas..

[tombear]

As you have probably worked out my maths is awful so please bare with.

i've just been given a old sail cloth/ canvas mattress protector to cut up for materials. It's good strong stuff and the pieces I recovered are nice and large, two long thin strips ideal for making straps and one large piece 37 inches wide with selvage intact by 84 long. The large piece weighs 1 pound 5.2 oz.

Not that is important but could some one please tell me what the nominal weight per square yard this stuff is? Ideally with the equation so I may possibly learn how to do the maths.

thanks!

Tom

 

[Harvestman]

Roughly, you have two and a third square yards of material (36 inches to a yard, so 84 inches = 2.33 yards. Call the piece 36 inches wide rather than 37 just to make it easy, so 1x2.33 yards)

If that piece weighs 1 lb 5.2, that is 21.2 ounces of material. Divide that by 2.33 and you get (roughly) 9 ounces per square yard.

I've done a bit of approximation there but near enough, that's what you have.

 

[bilmo-p5]

3ft wide by 7ft long gives 21 sq, ft

21 sq. ft. weighs 21oz,

so 1 sq.ft weighs 1oz

and 9 sq. ft or 1 sq.yd weighs 9oz

Your fabric weighs 9 oz/sq.yd

or about 310 gsm

 

[bilmo-p5]

Snap! Down to the same approximations.

 

[Harvestman]

Snap! Down to the same approximations.

Thank goodness for that. The risk with giving answers to questions like this is getting it horribly wrong. Thanks.

 

[tombear]

Cheers, I can follow that. 9 oz is a bit too light for a hammock or a large kit bag, I'd guessed as much from the feel, but ideal for clothes or bread bags. The materials at least 50 years old and a burn test confirms its pure natural, probably cotton rather than linen.

Thanks!

Tom

 

[Jared]

WolframAlpha is pretty good for this... takes care of the unit conversions and what not.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+lb+5.2oz+/+((37"+by+84")+in+square+yards)

8.84 oz

 

[bilmo-p5]

I found that the app. between my ears was ideally suited to dealing with Tom's problem.

It's an unfortunate sign of the times that many people resort to calculators and apps to deal with arithmetic problems which are, or ought to be, junior school fodder.

 

[oldtimer]

I found that the app. between my ears was ideally suited to dealing with Tom's problem.

It's an unfortunate sign of the times that many people resort to calculators and apps to deal with arithmetic problems which are, or ought to be, junior school fodder.

I qualified as a Primary School teacher in 1969. In my first job, the head told me not to bother with teaching Imperial measures since with metrication coming on stream in 1970, the 10 year old children I was teaching would be using metric measures in their working, adult lives.

I never cease to be amazed that people are still using imperial measures that they surely were never taught at school unless they are over 45.

PS Mine's a pint! and what is an app?

 

[Harvestman]

I qualified as a Primary School teacher in 1969. In my first job, the head told me not to bother with teaching Imperial measures since with metrication coming on stream in 1970, the 10 year old children I was teaching would be using metric measures in their working, adult lives.

I never cease to be amazed that people are still using imperial measures that they surely were never taught at school unless they are over 45.

PS Mine's a pint! and what is an app?

I can use both, though I prefer metric for most things. Given we went metric in 1971 it sort of frustrates me that people still use imperial measures.

 

[Jared]

I found that the app. between my ears was ideally suited to dealing with Tom's problem.

It's an unfortunate sign of the times that many people resort to calculators and apps to deal with arithmetic problems which are, or ought to be, junior school fodder.

I studied pure mathematics at uni ~20 years ago.
Still don't see the point in not using apps, if can type in 50 characters with no thought, and get an answer.

 

[bilmo-p5]

I studied pure mathematics at uni ~20 years ago.
Still don't see the point in not using apps, if can type in 50 characters with no thought, and get an answer.

You wouldn't. Thirty years ago, when you were getting your grounding in the 3 R's, mental arithmetic was already a dying habit.

 

[Jared]

You wouldn't. Thirty years ago, when you were getting your grounding in the 3 R's, mental arithmetic was already a dying habit.

I was learning my 3 R's longer than 30 years ago. We didn't even have a computer in our school back then. Later on we were still using books of mathematical tables, for trig and log functions.

 

[Harvestman]

Getting the right answer is much more important than the method used. My brain remembers and deals with numbers much more effectively than it deals with names. I can do mental maths, but I need an address book to remember the names of friends. For other people, such as my wife, the reverse is true.

 

[Jared]

Getting the right answer is much more important than the method used. My brain remembers and deals with numbers much more effectively than it deals with names. I can do mental maths, but I need an address book to remember the names of friends. For other people, such as my wife, the reverse is true.

Yeah, and it's good to know how to do it either mentally or on pencil and paper. But doesn't mean you have to do it that way all the time.

 

[bilmo-p5]

AFAIK, no one is suggesting that you should.

 

[tombear]

Oh I was taught metric but all the good stuff I came across in books etc was in imperial so that's what I think in. Well strictly speaking I think in imperial but use millimetres as just about 1/25 ths of a inch. I also use a lot of "natural" measurements, the width of a finger at a certain joint, a spread of the hand, what feels best in my hand for the diameter of a handle. I know that if I turn my head just so I can measure a pretty damn accurate cloth yard. I amble along at what turns out to be 3 miles a hour on the flat, Each to their own.

i've found a place that sells 18 oz cotton duck for a reasonable price. For once metric works for me as I need 78 inches and 2 metres is what, about 79? Otherwise I'd have to get three yards. Saying that the discounted prices start at 3 metres and I'd have that bit of spare to play with.

ATB

Tom

 

[dewi]

I qualified as a Primary School teacher in 1969. In my first job, the head told me not to bother with teaching Imperial measures since with metrication coming on stream in 1970, the 10 year old children I was teaching would be using metric measures in their working, adult lives.

I never cease to be amazed that people are still using imperial measures that they surely were never taught at school unless they are over 45.

PS Mine's a pint! and what is an app?

I'm 40 in a month or so and I wasn't taught the imperial system at school, but growing up everyone around me (adult wise) still used the imperial system when measuring for a bed or a shelf. It probably rubbed off as I now go to imperial first, then spend a couple of minutes converting it to metric in my head (which drives me insane most days due to the work I do)

However (and very few good sentences begin with however, so that should be a screaming warning before I say anything else) when you think about it how do you describe how tall you are? The majority of people will say "I'm 6ft tall" as apposed to "I'm 1 metre and 83 centimetres tall". When it comes to weight, we still weigh our bodies in pounds and stones rather than kilograms, despite the metric system taking over the weights of products on the supermarket shelves. And most telling, we order a pint at the pub, not the 568ml glass of beer. Despite our supposed integration into the metric system, we still measure distance in miles, we measure our fuel consumption on the road as miles per gallon and every politician needs to know the price of a pint of milk.

Maybe it'll all be integrated eventually, but I doubt it... we're a weird breed on this island.

 

[David LaFerney]

What is this "metric" which you speak of?

 

[dewi]

What is this "metric" which you speak of?

Watch Star Trek Next Generation for half an hour, they mention it a hundred times.