Replies

1. 
   UncleDunc | Jan 27, 2003 08:38pm | #1

   A .234

   B .238

   C .242

   D .246

   E .250

   F .257

   http://www.monroeengineering.com/helpfulstuff/decimal_equivalent.h

   Google is your friend.

1. 
   DWRead | Jan 27, 2003 10:10pm | #2

   Thanks, Uncle Dunc. I had searched using "Ask Jeeves" and found a similar chart, but it referred to A, B, etc. as sizes for wire, and I wasn't sure if it applied to drill bits as well.

   In any event, their measurements are uncommon enough that I don't need to buy them.

   By the way, how did you come to choose Google? Are the search engines all pretty much the same? I tried Google several years ago but every search brought up a screen that with a button that said "I Feel Lucky." No idea what that meant, and I didn't feel lucky--just lost. So I chose to search with other products: Ask Jeeves for general topics, Yahoo! for looking up business websites by name, and Ixquick to search for text strings.

   Janet

1. 
   BertJ | Jan 27, 2003 10:33pm | #3

   Google is certainly one of the better search engines, if not THE best.

   When you check "I Feel Lucky" you only see the very first posting that comes up. In most cases that won't give you what you want. I suggest you just skip the "I Feel Lucky" choice and look through all the postings. It there are too many (thousands!), try a search with more detail. For example, if you search "wood finishes" you will get way more postings than you want. If you change your search to "water finishes cherry wood" you will get closer to what you are looking for on the first try.

   Bert

2. 
   UncleDunc | Jan 28, 2003 01:06am | #4

   I use Google for several reasons.

   - It's very fast, both on the initial search and moving to subsequent results pages.

   - Google does a much better job of guessing what I'm really interested in, i.e. which sites to put first in the results.

   - There are no display ads, and the sponsored links are unobtrusive, but clearly marked.

   - The results are displayed in a readable size font.

   - The search string syntax is more flexible than some others. I've used other search engines that won't accept quoted strings or alternate choices.

   - It's very complete. I've seen Google find things that no other search engine could find. I have not seen other search engines find things that Google didn't find, although I've heard that might happen with very new web sites or very specialized topics.

   I do have a couple of gripes with Google.

   - They (used to?) have a ten word limit on the search string, and they counted any OR's that should really be counted as part of the syntax rather than as words I'm looking for.

   - They (apparently) don't search for plurals. I've used other engines that would look for both "book" and "books" if I entered "book" (but not for irregular plurals, like "child" and "children.)

   For your question, my search string was

   "letter size" drills decimal