How could the Book of Mormon fit on a few metal plates?
(As with the previous question, I have used information from Welch, op cit., pp. 275-277 for the following reply.) Joseph and others said the plates were thinner than common tin, which was typically around 0.02 inches thick at the time. Others said the plates were as thick as parchment or thick paper. An estimate of 0.015 inches per plate thus seems reasonable. Adding 50% air space (see the discussion of the density of the plates for the previous question), we can estimate that each plate occupied 0.03 inches. A stack 6 inches thick would hold roughly 200 plates, two-thirds of which was sealed, leaving about 67 plates and 134 surfaces from which our modern 500-page Book of Mormon was obtained. If the characters were compact and fine, as some accounts describe them to be, there is no difficulty in fitting the Book of Mormon onto the available plates – a collection that could have easily weighed around 60 pounds. In fact, efforts to write Book of Mormon passages in small Hebrew character
