The Four Horsemen

John B. wrote:
:On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

:
:Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
:better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
:possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
:much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
:ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
:hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
:treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
:of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.
:

:Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
:mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
:joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
:and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
:building site to make the pins.

A barn is not a boat. And the pin used in a cross bored mortise and
tenon joint isn't the same as a treenail tused to fasten planks in
place.

:And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
:Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
:they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
:big one.

What's a spar got to do with a treenail? Other than 'wood, on ships'?

he
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/att...0.16.27-am.png

Taht's a picture from Essex. Maybe Massachusetts did things
differently than Maine, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly, square
heads.

--
sig 91

Phil W Lee writes:

John B. considered Wed, 13 Nov 2013 08:39:18
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:06:53 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:21:09 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:43:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:


On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:50:58 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
Sir Ridesalot writes:

I believe it was Quakers who when building wooden ships used square
pegs in round holes because that stopped the peg from twisting loose
in use. So, sometimes even a square peg in a round hole is useful.

Not just Quakers, surely. Treenails were standard practice. I have
read that the non-native black locust trees in my area were originally
introduced to provide treenail stock.

Here are some pictures and video:

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/

Those certainly look round to me.

The head ends are left square, and the corners are driven into whatever
is being fastened. I would be amazed if Quakers or anyone else drove
full-length square pegs into round holes.

Why in the world would one want to leave a square head on a round peg.
Beside I don't think that you are envisioning just how treenails were
installed... The ends of the treenail were slotted and after driving
into place wedges were driven into the end of the treenail to lock it
in place.

Why would anyone put a flat head on a nail? So it doesn't go all the way
into the hole. The corners bite into the hole, keeping it in place
before wedges are driven into each end. After that the protruding ends
can be cut off.

I don't have to envision it, because I can watch the nice video of a guy
who apparently does it for a living:

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/

It's really pretty entertaining.

All I can say that I've spent time examining the remains of schooners
built in the early 1900's, I spent quite a bit of time helping with
the rebuilding of a 60 ft. wooden fishing boat under the supervision
of a wooden boat builder that was born in 1890 and spent his life
building traditional Maine wooden boats, I've build a boat or two
myself, and I've never seen a treenail with a square head.

But if you've seen it in the movies then I'll bow to your superior
knowledge.

So you've installed treenails? How were they made? Did you make them?
It seems to me that the only straightforward ways of making round pins
out of wood start with squares, why wouldn't it be *easier* to leave a
square head on them?

Well historically they were made by a bloke who split a plank into
smaller pieces and then used, probably a draw knife, to make them into
a round pin. My grandfather's barn, that I mentioned had treenails for
the mortise-tenon joints that weren't perfectly round.

I believe that the treenails you saw were probably made by turning the
pins on a lathe of some sort, a device that would not have been
available in a shipyard of the period in which treenails were commonly
used.


I won't claim to have more experience than you, but those Dutch guys
have a much better presentation, so I'll believe them first.

Interestingly I came across a "you-tube" of a guy making treenails,
see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vb1dfvWG1A
do you suppose that the table saw obviously used to make the square
sticks used as feed stock for the pins, or the electric drill used to
rotate the sticks through the cutter tube, were available during the
years when treenails were the only, or certainly the cheapest, method
of holding wood beams and planks together?

But never mind, you saw it in the movies.

The wood turning lathe pre-dates any form of power operation by
centuries.

You just take a bow, a string, and a treadle, and connect them
together with the string wrapped around the workpiece.
A forked stick can support the other end of the workpiece.

It's older than wind or water mills!

That's certainly true, but before power was available no one would have
used a lathe for shaping something not far from a simple cylinder -- way
too much work.



--

Phil W Lee writes:

Radey Shouman considered Tue, 12 Nov 2013
21:55:18 -0500 the perfect time to write:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

John B. wrote:
:On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:21:09 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

:John B. writes:
:
: On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:43:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
: wrote:
:
:Frank Krygowski writes:
:
: On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:50:58 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
: Sir Ridesalot writes:
:
: I believe it was Quakers who when building wooden ships used square
: pegs in round holes because that stopped the peg from twisting loose
: in use. So, sometimes even a square peg in a round hole is useful.
:
: Not just Quakers, surely. Treenails were standard practice. I have
: read that the non-native black locust trees in my area were originally
: introduced to provide treenail stock.
:
: Here are some pictures and video:
:
: http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
: Those certainly look round to me.
:
:The head ends are left square, and the corners are driven into whatever
:is being fastened. I would be amazed if Quakers or anyone else drove
:full-length square pegs into round holes.
:
: Why in the world would one want to leave a square head on a round peg.
: Beside I don't think that you are envisioning just how treenails were
: installed... The ends of the treenail were slotted and after driving
: into place wedges were driven into the end of the treenail to lock it
: in place.
:
:Why would anyone put a flat head on a nail? So it doesn't go all the way
:into the hole. The corners bite into the hole, keeping it in place
:before wedges are driven into each end. After that the protruding ends
:can be cut off.
:
:I don't have to envision it, because I can watch the nice video of a guy
:who apparently does it for a living:
:
:http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
:It's really pretty entertaining.

:All I can say that I've spent time examining the remains of schooners
:built in the early 1900's, I spent quite a bit of time helping with
:the rebuilding of a 60 ft. wooden fishing boat under the supervision
f a wooden boat builder that was born in 1890 and spent his life
:building traditional Maine wooden boats, I've build a boat or two
:myself, and I've never seen a treenail with a square head.

Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.


Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
building site to make the pins.

Almost any pin can restrain a mortise and tenon joint; all the forces
are perpendicular to the grain of the pin. That is, there is no force
trying to extract the pin.

Treenails are something different; they have to sustain forces parallel
to the grain.

And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
big one.

The Constitution has (obviously) been repeatedly re-rigged. They were
working on it last time I saw it, a couple of years ago. Many of the
tools in use looked pretty modern to me, but I did not see any oversized
lathes.

How do you think they made jousting lances?
And how long ago was that?

I don't know, but I would be amazed if they were turned on a lathe. I
would guess they were split from logs of the appropriate length and then
shaved into shape. Grain runout would obviously be a very bad thing.

Another interesting case are the many thousands of arrows that were
required for campaigns in the long bow era. These were made in an
assembly line fashion, each arrow being worked on serially by several
craftsmen.

One of the problems with trying to re-create a lot of things
accurately for things like experimental archaeology and re-enactments
is that wood lathes of the length used for exactly that purpose just
don't exist anymore.
Mind you, that pales into insignificance compared to the fact that we
don't manage our woodlands to produce suitable wood these days.

--

David Scheidt writes:

John B. wrote:
:On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

:
:Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
:better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
:possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
:much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
:ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
:hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
:treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
:of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.
:

:Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
:mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
:joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
:and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
:building site to make the pins.

A barn is not a boat. And the pin used in a cross bored mortise and
tenon joint isn't the same as a treenail tused to fasten planks in
place.

:And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
:Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
:they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
:big one.

What's a spar got to do with a treenail? Other than 'wood, on ships'?

he
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/att...0.16.27-am.png

Taht's a picture from Essex. Maybe Massachusetts did things
differently than Maine, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly, square
heads.

Nice picture. Here's a link that connects to some discussion:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/woo...s-37071-3.html

--

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 09:46:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:55:18 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

John B. wrote:
:On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:21:09 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

:John B. writes:
:
: On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:43:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
: wrote:
:
:Frank Krygowski writes:
:
: On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:50:58 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
: Sir Ridesalot writes:
:
: I believe it was Quakers who when building wooden ships used square
: pegs in round holes because that stopped the peg from twisting loose
: in use. So, sometimes even a square peg in a round hole is useful.
:
: Not just Quakers, surely. Treenails were standard practice. I have
: read that the non-native black locust trees in my area were originally
: introduced to provide treenail stock.
:
: Here are some pictures and video:
:
: http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
: Those certainly look round to me.
:
:The head ends are left square, and the corners are driven into whatever
:is being fastened. I would be amazed if Quakers or anyone else drove
:full-length square pegs into round holes.
:
: Why in the world would one want to leave a square head on a round peg.
: Beside I don't think that you are envisioning just how treenails were
: installed... The ends of the treenail were slotted and after driving
: into place wedges were driven into the end of the treenail to lock it
: in place.
:
:Why would anyone put a flat head on a nail? So it doesn't go all the way
:into the hole. The corners bite into the hole, keeping it in place
:before wedges are driven into each end. After that the protruding ends
:can be cut off.
:
:I don't have to envision it, because I can watch the nice video of a guy
:who apparently does it for a living:
:
:http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
:It's really pretty entertaining.

:All I can say that I've spent time examining the remains of schooners
:built in the early 1900's, I spent quite a bit of time helping with
:the rebuilding of a 60 ft. wooden fishing boat under the supervision
f a wooden boat builder that was born in 1890 and spent his life
:building traditional Maine wooden boats, I've build a boat or two
:myself, and I've never seen a treenail with a square head.

Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.


Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
building site to make the pins.

Almost any pin can restrain a mortise and tenon joint; all the forces
are perpendicular to the grain of the pin. That is, there is no force
trying to extract the pin.

Treenails are something different; they have to sustain forces parallel
to the grain.

Be rational. Some treenails held forces lengthwise and some held
forces in sheer. The treenails used in the Dutch example in holding
the stem together were in sheer, or will be as soon as the boat is
built.

Until this thread I had never heard the pin used with a drawbore tenon
referred to as a "treenail", which still seems an abuse of terminology.
You described treenails as having been obsoleted by wrought iron or
galvanized bolts; no reasonable person would replace the wooden pin for
a tenon with a threaded bolt, although one might replace the entire
joint with one fastened by bolts.

No, probably not in barns :-) And "modern" practices would have long
made obsolete the mortise and tenon joints in timbers although they
were still being used in Indonesian 30 years ago, just like by
Granddad's barn - mortise and tenon joint with a pin to hold it
together.

When you described your grandfather's barn as having treenails, I
assumed that it had joints similar to those between the planking and
frames on an old wooden vessel, which would have been quite unusual. In
fact, it seems it was put together in a way that you could hire a timber
framing crew to do today.

As I said, they were mortise and tenon joints, a mortise cut into one
piece and a tenon to fit into it with a pin through to hold it
together.

I've never seen joints made exactly this way on a boat, probably
because boats seldom use square framing (square in the sense of all
joints were at 90 degree).

By the way, have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KJbRHO76s
It is about a water powered mill in a tiny town in Vermont, Ben the
owner in the film apparently ran the mill from about 1941 until he
died. At about 13:30 into the film is a scene of Ben making dowel
pins. Not treenails but I suspect that in many instances treenails may
well have been made the same way.

Drawbored mortise and tenon joints may be old fashioned, but they're not
obsolete in the way that treenails are.

I'm not sure what a "drawbored" joint is but I saw pinned mortise and
tenon joints being used in house building in Indonesia some 30 years
ago and I suspect that they are still used there in the country if
wooden houses are still being built there.

And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
big one.

The Constitution has (obviously) been repeatedly re-rigged. They were
working on it last time I saw it, a couple of years ago. Many of the
tools in use looked pretty modern to me, but I did not see any oversized
lathes.

Most any working sailing ship get considerable maintenance but the
original spars were very likely to have been round.

Over half of the wood in the hull of the Constitution has been added
since it became a museum piece; it's safe to say that all of the spars
and rigging are of modern manufacture. The Constitution is no better
example than some other reproduction of actual period technique.

Repairs and modification of the USS Constitution started in about
1803, 6 years after she was built, and continued throughout her
service life. In 1819, Isaac Hull wrote to Stephen Decatur that:
"Constitution had received] a thorough repair...about eight years
after she was built. Every beam in her was new, and all the ceilings
under the orlops were found rotten, and her plank outside from the
water's edge to the Gunwale were taken off and new put on."

I would guess that throughout her life nearly everything had been
modified, rebuilt or replaced. Sort of like my Grandfather's axe that
had two new heads and five new hafts :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 09:51:43 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:42:21 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:06:53 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:21:09 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:43:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:50:58 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
Sir Ridesalot writes:

I believe it was Quakers who when building wooden ships used square
pegs in round holes because that stopped the peg from twisting loose
in use. So, sometimes even a square peg in a round hole is useful.

Not just Quakers, surely. Treenails were standard practice. I have
read that the non-native black locust trees in my area were originally
introduced to provide treenail stock.

Here are some pictures and video:

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/

Those certainly look round to me.

The head ends are left square, and the corners are driven into whatever
is being fastened. I would be amazed if Quakers or anyone else drove
full-length square pegs into round holes.

Why in the world would one want to leave a square head on a round peg.
Beside I don't think that you are envisioning just how treenails were
installed... The ends of the treenail were slotted and after driving
into place wedges were driven into the end of the treenail to lock it
in place.

Why would anyone put a flat head on a nail? So it doesn't go all the way
into the hole. The corners bite into the hole, keeping it in place
before wedges are driven into each end. After that the protruding ends
can be cut off.

I don't have to envision it, because I can watch the nice video of a guy
who apparently does it for a living:

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/

It's really pretty entertaining.

All I can say that I've spent time examining the remains of schooners
built in the early 1900's, I spent quite a bit of time helping with
the rebuilding of a 60 ft. wooden fishing boat under the supervision
of a wooden boat builder that was born in 1890 and spent his life
building traditional Maine wooden boats, I've build a boat or two
myself, and I've never seen a treenail with a square head.

But if you've seen it in the movies then I'll bow to your superior
knowledge.

So you've installed treenails? How were they made? Did you make them?
It seems to me that the only straightforward ways of making round pins
out of wood start with squares, why wouldn't it be *easier* to leave a
square head on them?

Well historically they were made by a bloke who split a plank into
smaller pieces and then used, probably a draw knife, to make them into
a round pin. My grandfather's barn, that I mentioned had treenails for
the mortise-tenon joints that weren't perfectly round.

Right, he split them into roughly square pieces, and then rounded them.
It's extra trouble to take the square head off, in that case -- you
have to turn the bugger around on your shaving horse, an extra step.

Err... I suspect that treenails would have been made in fairly long
lengths - say four to six feet. You take your work piece and lay it
down on whatever you are using to lay stuff on and round off one half
and then turn it end for end and do the other end. then cut the
treenails off a bit longer then the work. You wouldn't make the tree
nails to frame up a barn one piece at a time.

You talk like a man with a six foot lathe, rather than one with a froe
and a drawknife. From your description you've never rounded a piece of
stock by hand at all.

Well, not recently I'll admit, but I have hand made masts and spars
since I was 10 or 11 years old when I made (albeit with a great deal
of help from my father) an iceboat, as they were called then. It also
had a sail made from a flour sack, but my mother sewed that :-)

Hand split shingles are not made as you describe, nor are hand split
chair parts.

I hate to be the one to tell you but cedar shakes, as they are
properly called, are not round. Nor can they be made in one long
length and sliced off to size as they taper so if they were 6 foot
lengths one end would be paper thin and the other about two inches
thick and every shake would be a different thickness. Very difficult
to lay them evenly :-)

I believe that the treenails you saw were probably made by turning the
pins on a lathe of some sort, a device that would not have been
available in a shipyard of the period in which treenails were commonly
used.

True, I never claimed they were made in a historical fashion.


I won't claim to have more experience than you, but those Dutch guys
have a much better presentation, so I'll believe them first.

Interestingly I came across a "you-tube" of a guy making treenails,
see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vb1dfvWG1A

That comes from the website I posted -- they build one fairly large
wooden vessel, and film quite a bit of it.

do you suppose that the table saw obviously used to make the square
sticks used as feed stock for the pins, or the electric drill used to
rotate the sticks through the cutter tube, were available during the
years when treenails were the only, or certainly the cheapest, method
of holding wood beams and planks together?

I'm sure they weren't, and I'm sure those guys would have given a lot to
be able to bore holes with the kind of abandon we can now. But I also
suspect that those guys know more about historically plausible ship
jointing than you do, movies or not.

Well, I know how wooden boats were built on the coast of Maine by
people who learned their trade building sailing fishing boats.

Well, augers date back pretty far and the apprentice boy got to bore
the holes so if you were a master builder you probably could say you
made holes with abandon :-)

Apprentices had to be fed and sheltered, unlike electric motors.

But back in the day, your father had to pay the Master to take you as
an apprentice.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 07:49:22 -0800 (PST), Dan O
wrote:

On Wednesday, November 13, 2013 5:17:19 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Wednesday, November 13, 2013 6:35:23 PM UTC-5, Phil W Lee wrote:



The wood turning lathe pre-dates any form of power operation by

centuries.



You just take a bow, a string, and a treadle, and connect them

together with the string wrapped around the workpiece.

A forked stick can support the other end of the workpiece.



It's older than wind or water mills!



Our engineering school had an antique pedal-powered metal lathe in deep storage. I don't know its age (or where it is now) but it was nicely restored and pretty interesting.



This is interesting too:

http://www.turningtools.co.uk/histor...-turning2.html


Do you watch The Woodwright's Shop on TV. I'll bet my kids (they
of the "TV on 24/7 if anyone's awake" experiment, flying in the
face of conventional child rearing wisdom) are among the very few
who even know Roy Underhill - a wonderful, genuine character.

What is "conventional child rearing wisdom"? In my youth the thesis
was, "Spare the rod and spoil the child".

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 19:07:35 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Thu, 14 Nov 2013 08:34:38
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:44:37 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

Radey Shouman considered Tue, 12 Nov 2013
21:55:18 -0500 the perfect time to write:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

John B. wrote:
:On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:21:09 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

:John B. writes:
:
: On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:43:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
: wrote:
:
:Frank Krygowski writes:
:
: On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:50:58 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
: Sir Ridesalot writes:
:
: I believe it was Quakers who when building wooden ships used square
: pegs in round holes because that stopped the peg from twisting loose
: in use. So, sometimes even a square peg in a round hole is useful.
:
: Not just Quakers, surely. Treenails were standard practice. I have
: read that the non-native black locust trees in my area were originally
: introduced to provide treenail stock.
:
: Here are some pictures and video:
:
: http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
: Those certainly look round to me.
:
:The head ends are left square, and the corners are driven into whatever
:is being fastened. I would be amazed if Quakers or anyone else drove
:full-length square pegs into round holes.
:
: Why in the world would one want to leave a square head on a round peg.
: Beside I don't think that you are envisioning just how treenails were
: installed... The ends of the treenail were slotted and after driving
: into place wedges were driven into the end of the treenail to lock it
: in place.
:
:Why would anyone put a flat head on a nail? So it doesn't go all the way
:into the hole. The corners bite into the hole, keeping it in place
:before wedges are driven into each end. After that the protruding ends
:can be cut off.
:
:I don't have to envision it, because I can watch the nice video of a guy
:who apparently does it for a living:
:
:http://www.boat-building.org/learn-s...ood/treenails/
:
:It's really pretty entertaining.

:All I can say that I've spent time examining the remains of schooners
:built in the early 1900's, I spent quite a bit of time helping with
:the rebuilding of a 60 ft. wooden fishing boat under the supervision
f a wooden boat builder that was born in 1890 and spent his life
:building traditional Maine wooden boats, I've build a boat or two
:myself, and I've never seen a treenail with a square head.

Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.


Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
building site to make the pins.

Almost any pin can restrain a mortise and tenon joint; all the forces
are perpendicular to the grain of the pin. That is, there is no force
trying to extract the pin.

Treenails are something different; they have to sustain forces parallel
to the grain.

And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
big one.

The Constitution has (obviously) been repeatedly re-rigged. They were
working on it last time I saw it, a couple of years ago. Many of the
tools in use looked pretty modern to me, but I did not see any oversized
lathes.

How do you think they made jousting lances?
And how long ago was that?

One of the problems with trying to re-create a lot of things
accurately for things like experimental archaeology and re-enactments
is that wood lathes of the length used for exactly that purpose just
don't exist anymore.
Mind you, that pales into insignificance compared to the fact that we
don't manage our woodlands to produce suitable wood these days.

Spear shafts, as that is what a "lance" is, were very likely a
carefully selected sapling. With perhaps a bit of whittling to get rid
of stubs.

As for long lathes, of course they exist. How do you think that they
machine propeller shafts on a 100,000 H.P. ship :-)

You don't need the same number of intermediate supports on metal
lathes.
Try turning a wooden lance on a metal lathe and it'll bounce around
all over the place.

You do just as they do with long metal shafts. You use a "steady
rest".
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:21:11 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
And "modern" practices would have long
made obsolete the mortise and tenon joints in timbers although they
were still being used in Indonesian 30 years ago, just like by
Granddad's barn - mortise and tenon joint with a pin to hold it
together.

Across the street from my good friend's house in NE Ohio, a small barn (or really, huge garage) is being built by some local Amish company. The framing is all classic mortise, tenon and wooden pegs. I visited when the framework was done but still uncovered. Quite beautiful, in its way.

BTW, the pegs are all cylindrical, no square heads that I remember.

- Frank Krygowski

On Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:38:44 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 19:07:35 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

Try turning a wooden lance on a metal lathe and it'll bounce aroun
all over the place.

You do just as they do with long metal shafts. You use a "steady
rest".

Or "follower rest."

(Note: I don't know anything about making wooden lances, but I do know some things about metal lathes.)

- Frank Krygowski