Trennels or Treenails - possible ways to portray

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

At 1:100 scale the spikes would have a head of about 0.005"/0.006", so very fine. You could try very fine brass wire with a touch of blackening solution on the head - at this scale you probably wouldn't see the lack of a dome. If you were desperate to see them domed, you can buy cup-head burrs to go in a drill, doming the top before you push them in.
Notwithstanding the above, I would strongly urge caution, and think whether you really want to try spiking at this scale - you could end up with a model that looks totally overwhelmed by fastenings, whereas spikes and trennels should fade from sight at 3 or 4 feet distance.
Make up a test panel of planking and try different techniques on that before you commit yourself to doing it on the ship.

Ted

Thanks Ted. A threshold for how visible certain sized iron nails needs to be figured out or the model's appearance will be overly cluttered with dots. There is also the danger of splitting the walnut wales which are only 3mm wide, and that would just do damage. Also, pre-drilling doubles the amount of work. No easy solution. Using the shanks of brass pins for only the largest iron nails (the ones in the wales) seems to be the way to go. The nails in the planking are just too small. I wonder if a micro sized punch that leaves ring impressions in the wood could achieve a nice effect, sort of like a nail set, but much smaller. Time to experiment!

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

I have found after a certain size wooden pegs no longer are effective they are so small the joint will just snap apart including the peg. so I tried plastic pegs but even those will just break and one big draw back is a limited color choises. The best stuff is beading wire that comes in all different sizes.



another idea I tried is first drilling a hole



then I used an expanding glue like Gorilla glue and just a little squirt into the hole



the glue will expand and fill the hole



a quick and simple pass with fine sandpaper and there it is.

 

[mrshanks]

Nice Dave. What scale is that?

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

that is 1:48 scale and the "glue" peg is .030 in real ship building for timbers the copper rods were 1 1/4 dia.
just for the fun of it I did add a tiny bit of coloring to the glue to see if I can change the peg to look like iron or copper it did work.

 

[DocBlake]

That really looks good!

 

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

I have found after a certain size wooden pegs no longer are effective they are so small the joint will just snap apart including the peg. so I tried plastic pegs but even those will just break and one big draw back is a limited color choises. The best stuff is beading wire that comes in all different sizes.
another idea I tried is first drilling a hole
then I used an expanding glue like Gorilla glue and just a little squirt into the hole
the glue will expand and fill the hole
a quick and simple pass with fine sandpaper and there it is.

Dave, you're a genius! That works for larger rivet heads, but I'm dealing with micro sized ones.

 

[tedboat]

I have found after a certain size wooden pegs no longer are effective they are so small the joint will just snap apart including the peg. so I tried plastic pegs but even those will just break and one big draw back is a limited color choises. The best stuff is beading wire that comes in all different sizes.

View attachment 100818

another idea I tried is first drilling a hole

View attachment 100819

then I used an expanding glue like Gorilla glue and just a little squirt into the hole

View attachment 100820

the glue will expand and fill the hole

View attachment 100821

a quick and simple pass with fine sandpaper and there it is.

View attachment 100822

Neat job Dave!
Something else you might consider is furniture restoration wax. I have a pack of twenty wax sticks with every colour from black (ebony) to white (aspen) I use them occasionally to fill in gaps between timbers (argh! - my secret is out). The only caveat is that you use them after you have applied any surface treatment, as it is difficult to paint or stain over the wax. Probably not ideal for trennels, but I might give it a go .

Ted