A scarf or sometimes, scarph joint is a means of joining two pieces end to end. The material is commonly wood but may be metal. In each case, other ways have now been found round the problem so the scarf joint is largely an historical term. The joint was used where a length beyond that of the available timber or iron stock was required in the carpentry of timber-framed buildings or very commonly, in ship and boat-building. Scarf joints were also used in the days when iron was forge welded. A tree trunk as found at the Veluwe, The Netherlands Wood is an organic material found as the primary content of the stems of woody plants, especially trees, but also shrubs. ... Timber Timber is a term used to describe wood throughout its processing from the time it is planned for use in industrial products to the time it is used as a structural material or in other industrial product, such as wood pulp for paper production. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... A carpenter is a skilled craftsman who performs carpentry -- a wide range of woodworking that includes constructing buildings, furniture, and other large objects out of wood. ... Timber framing is the modern term for the traditional half-timbered construction in which timber provides a visible skeletal frame that supports the whole building. ... Italian ship-rigged vessel Amerigo Vespucci in New York Harbor, 1976 A ship is a large, sea-going watercraft, sometimes with multiple decks. ... Traditional boat building in South East Maluku, Indonesia Boat building is one of the oldest branches of engineering and is concerned with constructing the hulls of boats and, for sailboats, the masts, spars and rigging. ... Forge welding is a welding process of heating two or more pieces of wrought iron or steel until their surfaces are malleable and then hammering them together. ...

The joint consisted of tapering the ends to be joined into wedges, each the counterpart of the other. In wooden work, the tips were not normally brought to a feather edge but the thick ends of the wedges were begun with a small step down to compensate. Often, especially in shipwrights' work, the basic wedge was modified to give some degree of tensile strength to the joint. The joint was finished by bolting it or perhaps strapping it together. Iron bolts and straps were normal in carpentry while copper clench bolts were used in wooden shipbuilding. A competently made forge weld held itself together. Shipbuilding is the construction of ships. ... The tensile strength of a material is the maximum amount of tensile stress that it can be subjected to before it breaks. ... A bolt may be one of the following things: A type of threaded fastener. ...