Planking using small nails

[GaryA]

Hi Everyone, I am quite curious to see how many model shipwrights use nails to scale when doing planking, etc.
I have acquired these nails from the internet, and, being very hard to see with these tiny naked eyes, is that why most shipwrights use a pencil? Or is the drilling of the holes a problem?

They are 0.3 mm by 4mm in length and have a 0.5 mm head.
So, I have worked out that the nails the old long-time-ago shipwrights would have used in the 17/18Th century would have been copper, wood, or iron nails, or though the latter would have begun use in the 18th century. Their sizes would have varied for the application they were going to be used for. Today I am talking about the planking on the decks, and either copper or iron was used, and a large dab of tar was added to the hole to stop the rot of the nail. So saying this is why people use a pencil to show the staining of the tar, or just a easy way to create the belief of a nail being put in the wood to hold the plank to the timbers underneath.
I would also like to know why not pre-drill the holes slightly oversized so the nails would easily fit into the holes.
Drills and what to be careful of when buying them: I have a few of those packets of modellers drills, and I decided to buy another set of them as a few of the smaller drills have gone missing or broken. I bought another pack off the net and thought, no worries, have some replacements for those missing, that was a year ago. Well, today, I pulled out this new set of drills and looked at a .3mm drill, and it appeared to be too big by my eyesight. I measured and found it was 0.6mm, not 0.30mm. So I went to the next slot and took out the next size drill and measured that, 0.6 again, and the next one was the same. In total, 4 drill bits were all the same. So I could not check out if the fit was too small at the .30 mm hole or .35 was the way to go

 

[AllanKP69]

and a large dab of tar was added to the hole to stop the rot of the nail.

For English ships, when securing deck planking in the 17th and 16th centuries, they used metal spikes, usually iron, but according to Peter Goodwin, once they were driven home they were covered with wooden plugs, not tar or other sealants. I would not be surprised if they were covered with other media on some ship but I have not found an information based on contemporary sources about anything other than wooden plugs. I do not like to use the words never, always, only, etc for ships in the age of sail due to the many exceptions/variations tried but you will not be wrong to use wooden treenails as the exposed part will look like a round 1.5" diameter (0.8mm for 1:48, 0.6mm for 1:64, or 0.4mm for 1:96)wooden cover over the would be spikes. Tar or similar would not look like any contemporary model of English warships in the 17th and 18th centuries that I have seen, but maybe some member has photos of an exception
Allan.


While Victory is a modern ship now with fiber glass cannon and such, if they were true to reconstruction, you can see the wooden plugs rather than tar or other sealants. Tar and feet would be a mess on hot days.

 

[Kurt Konrath]

I have seen some just use brass wire, no heads to represent nails, but you have to research the specific ship or era and country to see what the real ship builders used.

One problem with nails, is they make it hard to sand a smooth surface, as they eat up sandpaper designed for softer wood.