h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What I have in mind is building a scale model of the HMS Victory. Now there is a web site [URL removed by moderator] that is selling pieces of copper and oak that were replaced on the Victory during one of its many restorations. Wouldn't it be great to build a model using Victory's original oak for planking. My question is would it be practical / possible to slice a piece of old oak into 1/8 to 1/16 inch sheets. I plan on using a scale of about 1:50 so that an 8 inch thick hull plank would be about 1/16 of an inch thick. Who could do this kind of work? I thought perhaps a plant that manufactures wood veneers. Anyone have any ideas / guidance?

After six years, maybe he grew his own oak tree instead?

Even dry new oak is fairly hard, very very old oak dries out into near iron hardness requiring the sharpest tools, in reality thin slices of oak would you imagine need electic saws to cut it.

aste of time trying to slice 1/8 into 1/16 though. Even the finest saw is going to lead to wastage. What's more likely is that you'll turn a 1/8 plank into two 1/32 planks. Splitting might be possible, but finicky. Better to sand your planks down to 1/16 IMO

I think he meant turn thick planks into 1/8 or 1/16 planks, however although turning part of a famous ship into a model sounds good, when I used to work into a boat yard many years ago that made wooden boats I do remember that whatever you cut up always turns out looking same in the sense that the model would look the same with old or new wood so you would lose the history of the wood. Older wood maybe slightly darker than new but since it would be painted it would be covered.

I think his problem may not only be cutting very very old oak as it is also very brittle and difficult to bend to shape of model ship since presumably he wants to use it for the model's planking on hull. When I used to work in a boatyard where they built wooden boats we could use clamps to pull the new oak planks to the shape of boat by pulling on the timbers since new oak is softer and more flexible.
There maybe a solution to his problem of brittle old oak and the solution is boiling water!
When we were doing boat repairs and had to replace oak timbers(a timber gives the boat shape and has planks riveted to it) we had to push the replacement timber into the boat and around the hull which was difficult even with softer new oak so the oak was boiled in a pipe over a fire untill softer. Also as timbers are around an inch thick and don't bent easily the were made from 3 thiner timbers cut on a saw and made into a more flexible composite timber which bent around hull shape more esily.

Don´t be slicing Old Oak, it is a very nice pub. Supposedly one of the biggest in the world too.

Oh well done on ruining the thread. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F19585?thread=145457#p1382734

The replies we gave were constructive and helpful, which ASKh2g2 is here for....not to play games with empty threads.

I'm sure Jack really appreciates the help, given he hasn't posted since Oct 2000