The first time I built one of John Welsford's boats it was a Rifleman for our son, Bonham. I knew I would need a metric tape for the job, but as soon as we began the layout, it immediately became aparent that what we needed was a meter stick. We got one somewhere and things really got going after that. Later I looked all over for a manufacturer that would sell us something for our customers to use. I knew Starrett had a stainless steel model but it was pretty expensive. But recently I found that they also made a nice aluminum job that was reasonable. Now we have these in stock.

This picture shows the two sides of the Starrett Meterstick. Yes, there are inches, but the metric markings are on the top on one side and the bottom on the other side. I would have put all the metric marks on one side and the inches and other stuff on the other. But they did not ask me.

Anyway, there is some other useful stuff on the back. Here is another picture that shows some more:

Besides the instructions for reading millimeters or centimeters, there is a chart of Linear Metric Units and Symbols; Exact Conversions showing the relationships of inches, feet and yards to metric measures; and Approximate Equivalents showing some useful relationships between metric measures and length, area and volume. Here is a picture of some of that last section: