Small nails

[JFMJr]

Beginner here. Doing my first build,  the HMS Beagle.  How do you drive such small nails? Thanks in advance for any help. 

[Gregory]

Hold them with some small needle nose plyers and tap them with a small hammer to get them started.  The I would use a small nail setting tool and the hammer to seat them. 

[barkeater]

This topic comes up on a fairly frequent basis. Those little nails tend to split the wood or bend as you've probably already found out. You can predrill to prevent the splitting but then you are left with holes or nail heads. I don't use them at all planking either first or second layer. You are better off pre-bending the plank by wetting it and using heat or a jig. Remember to let the wood dry (at least the second planking) as there can be some shrinkage. I just apply pva (wood) glue and hold or clamp in place. If I'm manually holding the plank in place, I usually only have to hold for 1-3 minutes to get a bond.  I try to stay away from cyanoacrylate as it stains and is very tough to sand out. The nails are however very handy in pinning furniture such as the ships wheel or stanchions in place.

Rich 

[JFMJr]

Was thinking...can you pre drill so nail slides in with glue? 

[barkeater]

 

"Was thinking...can you pre drill so nail slides in with glue? "

Yes, use cyanoacrylate to glue metal to wood. The problem then becomes that you can't remove them. Much easier and nicer looking to not use them and rather pre-bend and glue.

Rich

Edited January 26 by barkeater

[Jaager]

Putting aside that many if not most of the build logs for OcCre's Beagle have nothing to do with how an actual ship's (or bark rigged brig in Beagle) decking looked or was laid.

I believe that most builds, the trunnels are faux.  Drill a shallow hole and fill it with a dyed glue or glue-sawdust mixture.

Unless you are sophisticated about it - most of the pins that you will have to choose from will have steel as their core material.   It will rust away, leave a hole where it was and have a wide black bath tube ring stain around where it was.  Brass pins that are scale diameter have become almost impossible to find.

I have no idea how the fad came to be, but no actual 18th or 19th century vessels had short planks with the way too numerous butts of every other strake meeting on the same beam.  No vessels had trunnels, or bolts that were only at the butt joints.  The actual fasteners for deck planking were essentially invisible at 1:1 scale  never mind @ 1:60.  The seams between each strake would be so narrow that a well placed deck @ 1:60 with just the amber of Titebond II as the seam would be close to realistic.

Wood swells across the fibers.  A plank does not get longer or shorter. An end to end butt - if placed as close as should be  would be too tight for any caulking, would never move to need it.

 

That class of USN vessels had rock hard yellow Pine decking that was 40 feet long and 10 inches wide.  The English could not strip mine Georgia's Pine forests anymore, so their planking was probably closer to 20-30 feet long and maybe closer to 6 inches than 10 inches wide and their Baltic Pine would not turn a nail.  But it was never parquet-like in its finished look..

[Gregory]

@Jaager

 

Interesting insight into the tree nailing effect  ,  but do you have any suggestions regarding JFMJr's question regarding how to drive the small nails that come with most kits?

[Jaager]

1 hour ago, Gregory said:

but do you have any suggestions regarding JFMJr's question regarding how to drive the small nails that come with most kits

Yes.

 

(With the caveat that narrow economy plywood,  spaced at overly wide intervals,  is a barely adequate support at best and man-made synthetic sheet material is heretical and probably having a short half life. I am not encouraging the actual use it any of it or anything large enough to be called a "nail".)

 

For the first layer of planking::  

drill a hole that is a # or ## smaller than the "nail" diameter in the plank while it is on work surface.

For cheap ply - do nothing for the nail - it should crush internally with no adverse effect.  I suspect that a nail in the middle layer(s) of cheap ply will more closely resemble a glass stirring rod in a test tube than a ten penny nail in a 2x4.  A hammer may be more force than needed.

For something like MDF, do a test. if it propagates the nail's compression to its surface or resists too much, drill an under size hole.  If it accepts the compression, let the nail be a nail.

Otherwise, drill an under size pilot hole.  For MDF, if it bends the nail, drill a hole.

 

Hold the nail in a MM 'spike insertion plier"  or curved Kelly clamp.  Next - thru a hole in its center - place a small square piece of wood scrap that covers the width of the plank  and is about 1-2 times the plank thickness on the nail.(Hitch Chock) 

Push this assembly thru the hole in the plank.  PVA glue the plank.  PVA glue will hold metal to wood against mild resistance force.  Rotational force will break it.

A light weight hammer can set the nail.  When the glue is set, split out the hitch chock.  Nip off the nail at the plank surface.  File it flush.

 

For the show layer,  I suspect that it is a thin veneer.  Any sort of nail is asking for a split.  The nails are way over size to nip - file -and leave on view.

 

For both layers. a pre-bent plank that will just lay where it is wanted when oriented to gravity is a really good idea.  

A dry heat - a curved surface  soldering rod adapter - and a rheostat to keep the heating surface's temp below a wood char or wood cook temp will melt the lignin enough to allow fiber bend and twist and then reset to hold the new shape.   Wood wants to bend with the plane of the thin dimension.  It will resist a bend thru the thick dimension. It is spilling that should cover a bend that is lateral to the plank.  If a bend is forced against the preferred dimension in a plank, it will spend! the rest of its existence trying to twist back to its natural conformation.

 

!Sorry for the anthropologic verbs, it is just easier to write that way.