Drilling pin rails

[Tompslattery]

Hi

 

havent attempted to drill the holes for the belaying pins yet but thinking ahead. Is there a method to try and prevent splitting the rail?  
 

cheers

 

Tom

[allanyed]

 Tom,

 

If the pins are to proper  scale, the hole will be quite small compared to the width of the rail so should not split.  The handle diameter should be somewhere between 1.5" and 2" so it fits well in the hand and the lower part in the neighborhood of 1"- 1 1/8" diameter.  I don't know what your model scale is but if it  is the Artesania kit at 1:50, approximate hole size would be about  0.0225 (number 53 wire size drill bit)

 

Most kits have pins the diameters of which are  over sized and drilling large  holes in the rail to accommodate them could cause splitting problems.   If you decide  to go with the kit pins and they are oversized in diameter, clamp the pin rack in a vise, mark where the holes are to be drilled and then drill the holes.  A small drill press works best, but any small bench vice will do the trick if using hand drills, manual or power. 

 

Making your own pins is an option, but at these diameters, making them of wood, including boxwood,  is a challenge.   I have used  pieces of brass rod of the appropriate handle diameter, chuck it in a drill press or Dremel type unit and with fine file, reduce the lower part to the proper diameter.  Once done, the top of the handle can be hand filed to round it a bit.  It can then be painted to a wood color or blackened (for ships when iron pins came into use.)

 

Allan

[David Lester]

One idea that can help is to first glue a piece of paper to the underside of the wood. Afterwords, you can either leave the paper there or scrape/sand it off.

David

[Tompslattery]

The plans say to drill a 1.5mm hole for the pins. I haven’t measured the actual diameter of the pins themselves 

[vaddoc]

A drill press is a very useful tool,  I use mine all the time. Carbide drills cut holes with surgical precision, no issues with wood splitting. You can get also drills at 0.05 mm increments which is useful some times.

[Bob Cleek]

Using a drill press, clamp a strip of wood to the drill press table to serve as a fence so that the drill bit is above the center of the pin rail when the rail is up against the clamped wood fence. Slide the pin rail against the fence and drill the holes equally spaced. The line of holes will be straight. If you want to get really fancy, you can mount the fence on a piece of wood with a pin the diameter of the holes sticking up exactly the distance between the pins from the point where the drill bit hits. Then the pin rail can be drilled and, as each hole is drilled, the rail can be dropped over the pin on each most recently drilled hole as the pin rail is slid against the fence, which perfectly aligns the next hole to be drilled. That will ensure the holes are equally spaced and in a straight line.  If pins aren't evenly spaced in a straight line on a pin rail, they tend to stick out like a sore thumb.

 

Drilling pin rails without a drill press is very difficult. I'd use a bit in a pin vise. A hand-held Dremel is quite difficult to control for such an application.

[Tompslattery]

Sadly don’t have a drill press. Do have a pin vise and a dremmel

[vaddoc]

Get the cheap proxon drill press, it is great!

[Gregory]

Drill an undersized hole first, then use a reamer or pin vise with increasingly large bits until you get the desired size, using the belaying pin as a guide.

 

 

[modeller_masa]

If you know how to use a milling machine, I recommend to buy cheap Chinese CNC machine with digital controller at $100. You can move the drill bit by 0.01mm to X, Y, and Z axis.

[amateur]

In my experience: the pinrail does not split at drilling (especially not when using a sharp drill in a dremel), it splits when you try to force a 1.55 mm pin in a 1.5 mm hole.....

 

I didn't drill many rails, but for me the following, rather lowtech solution worked: 

take the piece of wood, mark the positions of the pins (using a needle, and along a ruler to get the holes on a straight line, evenly spaced. Drill 'pilot holes' using a .5 mm dril (by hand, why not?) and drill again using a 1,5 mm drill

 

btw: you could also stop at the .5 mm, as these are probably more in scale. You can use .5 steel wire to make your pins (using while glue to form the head). His will help you to make strong, thing and long enough pins. I think (but am not sure) that Edt shows this inhis Yong America build log)

 

Jan

[Bob Cleek]

10 hours ago, Tompslattery said:

Sadly don’t have a drill press. Do have a pin vise and a dremmel

I would advise you experiment on some scrap wood with both and see which you prefer. I'm guessing you'll end up preferring the pin vise for it's accuracy.  However, I'd say that after a Dremel, some sort of drill press would be the next most useful powered tool a modeler would want to have, so I'd urge you to bite the bullet and get one now.

 

You can get one of the $79 Chinese mini drill presses and get by, but you get what you pay for and, too often, less than that with Chinese machine tools.  You can also pay a bit more ($134 US) for a Vanda-Lay drill press that holds a Dremel mototool. (The Dremel drill press stand is generally considered to be close to worthless because it lacks the precision modeling demands. ) http://vanda-layindustries.com/ (I have no idea of the shiping and duty costs to Australia, though.)

 

• 

   

  Vanda-Lay also has a variants of their basic drill press (above) which include a mini-milling machine using the Dremel mototool as well as other brands. These Dremel-powered machine tools are quite good, but aren't up to the level of the far more expensive dedicated micro-milling machines. Their primary weakness is the Dremel Mototool, which depends on speed rather than torque for its power.  For modeling, however, they do offer a good compromise in terms of a cost to benefit analysis. Vanda-Lay is a small family business with excellent service and support.

   

  See the discussion on drill presses at: 

   

   

[barkeater]

 

Pin vise works for me. I can get better looking holes than with a Dremel and I don't have a drill press. I would start small and work up which also prevents splitting and this also lets you adjust if your hole is slightly off kilter

[Brewerpaul]

I haven't drilled them yet, but I'm about to face this problem with my Pride of Baltimore II . Two ideas I have are

 

1) Use scrap from the thinnest stock from the laser cut parts. It's a lot stronger than the basswood strips

2) Drill the holes in an oversized piece of that stock,maybe 2 or three times as wide as the rail, and longer also. Once I have a nice straight,evenly spaced line, I'll trim the rail to size. The oversized wood should be a lot stronger than a really narrow strip.

[Chuck Seiler]

On 6/4/2020 at 1:25 AM, Tompslattery said:

Sadly don’t have a drill press. Do have a pin vise and a dremmel

I would use the pin vise.  I find it more controllable in situations like this.

[Brewerpaul]

On 2/27/2021 at 12:25 PM, Brewerpaul said:

I haven't drilled them yet, but I'm about to face this problem with my Pride of Baltimore II . Two ideas I have are

 

1) Use scrap from the thinnest stock from the laser cut parts. It's a lot stronger than the basswood strips

2) Drill the holes in an oversized piece of that stock,maybe 2 or three times as wide as the rail, and longer also. Once I have a nice straight,evenly spaced line, I'll trim the rail to size. The oversized wood should be a lot stronger than a really narrow strip.

Well, that worked up to a point. I drilled a nice line of holes in an oversized piece of laser stock and trimmed it down to size. The problem came when I tried to notch that piece to mate with the notch in the pinrail post (this is just foreward of the foremast).  That's when the rail split along the perforated line I had just drilled 😒

I ended up making a decent rail from a piece of 1/16" basswood strip. It's too thick for scale, so I beveled the front edge to make it thicker. Installed, it looks like the rail is thinner.

[Chazz]

Do everything else before drilling a closely spaced line of holes.  Thar's just a perforated line for breaking, especially when its along the grain.  Another thing if it works for you: prefinish the piece if necessary, then soak it with CA to make it stronger

 

Chazz

[allanyed]

If you don't want to soak the wood with CA (I am swooning just thinking about the foul fumes) try using a different wood such as castello or true boxwood (if you can find the latter).  You can buy small blocks of castello for a reasonable price at Gilmer Woods.   Swiss Pear will work as well if you want a reddish color.

Allan

[druxey]

One can strengthen a softer wood using dilute PVA (white) glue.Coat both sides liberally and allow to dry completely, then shape and drill. No fumes!

[amateur]

But make sure that you do not need to stain the wood after covering the part in glue...

 

Jan

[Chazz]

Whjen I was MUCH younger I used Wood Hardener from Minwax to fix (harden) rotten wood in windows etc. and then filled the result with their companion wood filler.  They still sell this stuff.

 

I have thought of this on occasion for hardening softer wood as suggested here using CA but never got around to trying it.  Has anyone tried it?

 

Chazz

[Eric1]

I've used ca glue to fix split wood and to harden soft spots and it works very well, but it does make it harder to carve

[Brewerpaul]

On 3/18/2021 at 6:42 PM, Chazz said:

Whjen I was MUCH younger I used Wood Hardener from Minwax to fix (harden) rotten wood in windows etc. and then filled the result with their companion wood filler.  They still sell this stuff.

 

I have thought of this on occasion for hardening softer wood as suggested here using CA but never got around to trying it.  Has anyone tried it?

 

Chazz

I haven't used it for model making, but I make Irish Penny Whistles from exotic woods, and I've used the Minwax hardener to strengthen some spalted woods. It works really well. Note that it does discolor the wood, which may or may not be an issue on a pin rail. Actually, I think I have a bit left in the can so I may give it a try.