A chap walked into my office today to ask whether he was right that a
kilometre was about five eighths of a mile.  Without thinking I told him to
multiply miles by 1.60934 to convert to km.  I have a very sad brain.  I can
recall idiotic facts like that but can't find the pencil I put down 10 seconds
ago.
 In England you can go to a shop and ask for 2.4 metres of 4 inch by 2 inch
timber.  When using the timber you use either the metric or the imperial side
of the ruler to give you in figures the measurement you had already decided
upon by rule of thumb.  The figures are only useful for recording the
measurements so they can be reproduced.  I don't often need to make the same
item twice so there's little point.  A thumb is about an inch; two fingers
spread make about 3 inches; a hand is 4 inches (as used for measuring the
height of horses); 4 fingers spread is 6 inches; a hand span is 9 inches; my
feet are a foot long; elbow to fingertip is 18 inches and my outstretched arms
are a fathom.  A worker bee is half an inch long; a queen three quarters.
Worker cells come at 5 to an inch, drone cells are 4.
 The whole of nature seems to be designed around English measurements (or vice
versa).  The metric system is an artificial abomination imposed on us by
Napoleon and his spiritual descendants and should be resisted.  Some
conversions are easy to remember: litres to and from English (not US) gallons
are achieved by using the figures 22 or 45 which, as a shooter, I have in my
mind.
It is many years since I made frames.  I used unplaned 2 x 1 pine in 2.4 metre
lengths.  As I recall I achieved 17 complete frames from 2 lengths with very
little waste except sawdust.  I used a Black and Decker circular saw drill
attachment mounted upside down on a home made saw bench and fence and still
have all my fingers.   The frames were rougher than factory made but the bees
don't mind.  I don't remember that they were appreciably cheaper than factory
made.
  They don't have to be rough.  A friend who was retiring from beekeeping as
he was about 80 and had to look after his sick wife gave me the unassembled
frames he had made.  Factory frames were poor by comparison.  He also gave me
his apiary of Cottager hives that he made from designs in his father's bee
book (vintage about 1906).  I still use the hives.  Nothing ever sticks in
them.  The bees don't glue everything together with propolis or brace comb.
The reason is that they were made accurately.  I don't know what equipment he
used but everything was in a very small garden shed.
Chris Slade