Yep, it’s pronounced tree-nailing because that is what I am doing. The planks on a ship are usually held in place with wooden pegs driven into the ends of each plank and into each bulkhead the plank spans. So, to simulate that on the Bluenose, I have to get a bunch of little sticks, drill holes in all the planks at each bulkhead and glue them in place. How small you say? How does .028″ diameter grab ya?
I’m doing this in columns at each bulkhead. While planking, I was drawing a pencil line along each plank so that I knew where each bulkhead was. I kind of stopped doing that toward the end of the planking.
First step is to drill holes with a .028″ drill-bit stuck in my dremel tool. Handy little thing.
I used painter’s tape to mark off a straight line along the bulkhead so that I could keep all my trenails lined up nicely.
Then drill.
Ta-da!
Once that’s done, I take one of my small sticks and dip it in some Elmer’s wood glue.
Then stick it in a hole I drilled.
Snip it off with my handy Xuron clippers.
And repeat until an entire bulkhead is done.
Then I sand it smooth and move on to the next bulkhead. The process actually goes pretty easily. I’ve got one side completed entirely by now and am about half-way done with the other side. The most difficult part of the whole process was making the little sticks out of bigger sticks. I think that will be the topic of my next post.
JIm