This is a good example of how folks on opposite sides of the divide have such drastically different perceptions. We can read the same thing and arrive at completely
opposite – not just different - conclusions. I think that Mike’s informative post supported the point I was making. Yet he and mak would undoubtedly insist it did not. I’m going to share the points in his post that I believe support my assertion:
I haven't measured the thickness (maybe some day at work I will), but they are fairly thick. Thicker than construction paper but thinner than cardboard. They might be described as being like thick paper (but most people would think they might be a little thicker than the typical thick paper of our day).
This has been part of my point all long. Emma clearly described the plates as having the thickness of thick paper. As much as you want to clearly justify this description with the plates you make, you can’t quite do it. “most people would think they might be a little thicker than the typical thick paper of our day”. Of course, the use of the phrase “of our day” seems to insinuate that thick paper was thicker during Joseph Smith’s day. Unless I see evidence otherwise, I find this a suspect insinuation. I suspect that most people in nineteenth century New England would also find your plates to be thicker than the typical thick paper of their day.
But that’s not all:
Our "brass" metal pieces come in larger sheets (just guessing, some of the bigger pieces we have could measure 8x10 or larger). They are not very pliable. You can bend a bit of curve in a large piece but smaller pieces would require some real strength or pliers.
Emma said the plates were pliable, of the thickness of thick paper.
I've always noticed that these "plates" make a metalic rustling sound whenever you touch them. While they are too firm to bend like paper, it's very easy to "thumb" through the top layers of a stack of these plates (letting each individual plate fall on the lower plate as your thumb gradually raises the upper plates).
I think anyone who has worked with this engraving "brass" (even those who had never heard of the Book of Mormon arguments in this thread) could easily and naturally decribe them in the same manner desribed by Emma. You can thumb the (slightly thicker than) thick paper-like metal plates and when doing so, they make a metallic rustling sound.
These plates are too firm to bend like paper. Hence, you can’t thumb the plates as you would thumb the leaves of a book – because when you thumb the leaves of the book, you are bending the paper.
You, like makelan, appear to ignore the context of Emma’s remarks when she talked about the plates making a rustling sound. She compared it to thumbing the leaves of a book. She didn’t compare it to some lateral, sliding movement. She said the plates were pliable like thick paper. It appears to me that Mike actually agrees that metal plates that would be pliable like thick paper could not also be thick enough to sustain engravings on both sides. He didn’t flat out state as much, but it appears to be a reasonable conclusion.
by the way, this entire argument is based on yet another anachronism. Apologists now assert that the plates were made of tumbaga, which is a copper-gold alloy manufactured through metallurgy. There is no evidence of the manufacture and/or use of tumbaga before the period in which metallurgy is generally recognized in the New World – roughly around 800 AD.
