And in fact, the last place I was in that had very good metal rulers and yardsticks with both metric and inches was an office supply. All the office supply places carry good quality, decently priced rulers.

BTW, they also have useful stuff like the circle template I bought a couple of days ago. I'm always looking around the shop for a jar top or roll of tape the right diameter to draw a circle. Now I've got that template with graduated holes in it. And it wasn't but a couple of bucks. Now where is that sucker????