Sheet Metal Gauge Thickness Chart (Ga. History You Don’t Know)

Gauge definition

GAUGE (abbreviated as Ga.), Which Americans call, is a unit of measurement of diameter that originated in North America and belongs to the Browne & Sharpe measurement system.

The larger the number of GAUGE is, the smaller the diameter is. It is also used to indicate thickness after promotion.

There is no conversion formula due to the difference between Ga. scale and inch. The comparison of different unit systems is shown in the table below.

Sheet metal GAUGE thickness chart

GAUGE (Ga.)	Steel	Galvanized Steel	Stainless Steel	Aluminum	Electrical Steel
	in (mm)	in (mm)	in (mm)	in (mm)	in (mm)
3	0.2391 (6.07)	–	–	–	–
4	0.2242 (5.69)	–	–	–	–
6	0.1943 (4.94)	–	–	0.162 (4.1)	–
7	0.1793 (4.55)	–	0.1875 (4.76)	0.1443 (3.67)	–
8	0.1644 (4.18)	0.1681 (4.27)	0.1719 (4.37)	0.1285 (3.26)	–
9	0.1495 (3.80)	0.1532 (3.89)	0.1563 (3.97)	0.1144 (2.91)	–
10	0.1345 (3.42)	0.1382 (3.51)	0.1406 (3.57)	0.1019 (2.59)	–
11	0.1196 (3.04)	0.1233 (3.13)	0.1250 (3.18)	0.0907 (2.30)	–
12	0.1046 (2.66)	0.1084 (2.75)	0.1094 (2.78)	0.0808 (2.05)	–
13	0.0897 (2.28)	0.0934 (2.37)	0.094 (2.4)	0.072 (1.8)	–
14	0.0747 (1.90)	0.0785 (1.99)	0.0781 (1.98)	0.0641 (1.63)	–
15	0.0673 (1.71)	0.0710 (1.80)	0.07 (1.8)	0.057 (1.4)	–
16	0.0598 (1.52)	0.0635 (1.61)	0.0625 (1.59)	0.0508 (1.29)	–
17	0.0538 (1.37)	0.0575 (1.46)	0.056 (1.4)	0.045 (1.1)	–
18	0.0478 (1.21)	0.0516 (1.31)	0.0500 (1.27)	0.0403 (1.02)	–
19	0.0418 (1.06)	0.0456 (1.16)	0.044 (1.1)	0.036 (0.91)	–
20	0.0359 (0.91)	0.0396 (1.01)	0.0375 (0.95)	0.0320 (0.81)	–
21	0.0329 (0.84)	0.0366 (0.93)	0.034 (0.86)	0.028 (0.71)	–
22	0.0299 (0.76)	0.0336 (0.85)	0.031 (0.79)	0.025 (0.64)	0.0310 (0.787)
23	0.0269 (0.68)	0.0306 (0.78)	0.028 (0.71)	0.023 (0.58)	0.0280 (0.711)
24	0.0239 (0.61)	0.0276 (0.70)	0.025 (0.64)	0.02 (0.51)	0.0250 (0.64)
25	0.0209 (0.53)	0.0247 (0.63)	0.022 (0.56)	0.018 (0.46)	0.0197 (0.50)
26	0.0179 (0.45)	0.0217 (0.55)	0.019 (0.48)	0.017 (0.43)	0.0185 (0.47)
27	0.0164 (0.42)	0.0202 (0.51)	0.017 (0.43)	0.014 (0.36)	–
28	0.0149 (0.38)	0.0187 (0.47)	0.016 (0.41)	0.0126 (0.32)	–
29	0.0135 (0.34)	0.0172 (0.44)	0.014 (0.36)	0.0113 (0.29)	0.0140 (0.35)
30	0.0120 (0.30)	0.0157 (0.40)	0.013 (0.33)	0.0100 (0.25)	0.011 (0.27)
31	0.0105 (0.27)	0.0142 (0.36)	0.011 (0.28)	0.0089 (0.23)	0.0100 (0.25)
32	0.0097 (0.25)	–	–	–	–
33	0.0090 (0.23)	–	–	–	0.009 (0.23)
34	0.0082 (0.21)	–	–	–	–
35	0.0075 (0.19)	–	–	–	–
36	0.0067 (0.17)	–	–	–	0.007 (0.18)
37	0.0064 (0.16)	–	–	–	–
38	0.0060 (0.15)	–	–	–	0.005 (0.127)

The history of Gauge

In fact, the use of “GAUGE” to indicate thickness can be traced back to the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution.

At the time, people who produced wire needed a way to quantify the products they sold.

Of course, the easiest method is the gravimetric method.

But if the buyer only proposes to buy 15 pounds of wire, but does not specify the diameter of the wire, it will also bring a lot of trouble.

Therefore, the wire craftsmen will report the diameter according to the number of wire drawing they have performed.

This is the origin of GAUGE.

Because each drawing will reduce the diameter of the wire, the more times it is drawn, the smaller the diameter of the wire.

Therefore, the larger the GAUGE number, the smaller the diameter of the corresponding wire.

At that time, steel mills found that it was easier to weigh than to measure thickness when rolling plates.

Therefore, similar to metal wires, steel plates can be sold using the unit area weight method.

The thinner the corresponding steel plate, the smaller the weight per square foot.

Therefore, steel mills believe that the most convenient way to specify the thickness of steel plates is to establish the steel plate’s GAUGE number system by referring to the GAUGE number system adopted by the wire industry.

As for the historical origin of the GAUGE number, it may be determined by the level of productivity development at that time.

In the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, its industrial standards were almost blank, so each manufacturer had to develop its own standards.

Over time and the improvement of the industry level, the standards of these manufacturers have gradually become consistent, and the unified standard wire gauge (SWG), steel sheet material manufacturer’s standard gauge (MSG) and non-ferrous metals’ american wire gauge (AWG) have gradually been established.

Regarding GAUGE numbers, a confusing phenomenon is that when you change from one GAUGE number to the next GAUGE number, the change in thickness and weight per unit area is not constant.

In fact, if you graph these numbers, you will see an “exponential decay curve”.

In other words, the difference between consecutive GAUGE numbers becomes smaller as the GAUGE value increases.

For example, the difference between 10Ga. and 11Ga. is 0.0149″, while the difference between 35Ga. and 36Ga is only 0.0008″.

The reason for this difference can be traced back to the origin of the GAUGE number: wire making, which depends on the amount of reduction that can be achieved with each drawing.

In order to manufacture thin metal wires, wire craftsmen hope to reduce the cross section as soon as possible. However, due to the limitation of the metallurgical mechanism of material deformation, the amount of diameter reduction in a single pass is limited.

Over time, the wire industry has determined the optimal number of times required for wire drawing.

This is the root cause of the exponential decay curve we see.

It should be noted that when the non-ferrous metal plate and the steel plate are both at a certain Ga. number, the thickness is actually different.

For example, 21Ga. corresponds to the standard steel thickness of 0.0329 inches (0.84mm); the corresponding galvanized steel thickness is 0.0366 inches (0.93mm), and the corresponding aluminum thickness is 0.028 inches (0.71mm).

The story of gauge.