Location(s)
mexico
Mexico
wood thickness and width
Hello ya' all, do you happen to know what the usual and the maximum width of wood planks, boards, supporting lumber and other wood aids used for bins, mine reinforcement and house building in the USA, was during the first half of the 1900's.
Lazaro, I have done a fair
Lazaro,
I have done a fair amount of poking around abandoned mines here in California and although I never actually measured with a tape, the majority of support timbers seemed to be in the 12" x12" range with cribbing and cross bracing in the 4" x 6" range.
The one thing that really stood out was that it was VERY rough, almost like it was hewn by hand.
The soil/rock conditions would dictate the size and spacing I'm sure.
Chucke's observations sound
Chucke's observations sound just about right. I've been through a couple of old Pennsylvania coal mines and that's about the dimensions there also. He's probably right about the lumber being hand hewn. A lot of the big timbers look like tree trunks with the bark cut off. Very rough.
The roughness of the
The roughness of the timbers would simply be from being cut with a circular type or vertical type saw mechanical saw mill. They did not plane lumber then unless it was for finish work and even then, it was still full dimension, i.e. a 2x4 was 2 inches by 4 inches and a 1x6 was actually 1 inch by 6 inches.
My own home, built in 1850-52 is made from "rough" (unplaned) lumber, with many of the wall and roof boards being 1 inch thick by 24 inches wide!
-mike
wood thickness and width
lazaro
FWIW
After a lot of experimentation over the years, and irrespective of full-size 'reality', I have found that if you scribe-in boards that are a minimum One (scale) Foot wide, these are quite believable - below that width they tend to become meaningless, a blur in the background, that any paint you put on quite quickly masks, so the effort put into them becomes somewhat pointless - sad but true I'm afraid!
And as far as timber dimensions are concerned:
As far as I can ascertain, there appears to have been little standardization of sizes, with each mine making its own arrangements with its local saw-miller/s to suit its own requirements.
This tended to result in a wide variation in timber used, its dimensions and the standard of finishes that were acceptable, while not forgetting that, due to the differing inherent strengths of each tree-type, different timbers had different uses within a mine - some more suitable for wet conditions, some for dry etc, etc.
As I said, FWIW - hope this has helped.
Komata
"TVR - serving the Northern Taranaki . . . "
lazaro, Komata, as I am
lazaro, Komata, as I am sure you can tell, is arguably nScale.net's most eloquent member!
wood thickness and width
lazaro
Yes, we do use the Metric System in New Zealand, but because the majority of our membership are from the USA, I use 'Imperial' measurements (feet, inches) here - it's easier for all concerned.
(As well, trying to convert feet and inches to Millimetres and Centimetres or vice-versa is a real pain, and very difficult to do on a continuing basis)
BryanC
Thanks for the compliment. 'Eloquent' - I like it!! [LOL]
Komata
"TVR - serving the Northern Taranaki . . . "
true and trying
Yea Tanaka, it is a real pain, I still can't adjust to it, specially getting my mind to make calculations in eighths , etc. when the easiest thing for me is to consider that 1 is equal to 160 to get the exact scale; now it is converting from feet to inches to centimeters and then multiplying by 160, man, that is the hardest part in the hobby, but I'll get there
Work in decimal inches,
Work in decimal inches, then you only need 25.4, and 160 as your magic numbers.
ie; Instead of 10' 6¼" think of it as 126.250", then x25.4 gives mm, and ÷160 gives N scale.
There are several Scale Converters on the web that tackle the number crunching for you (check our links section, and/or do a Google search).
A spreadsheet could also be setup to quickly crunch the numbers for you (PM me if you need assistance with this).
--
Bryan
Joined: 2007-04-21