Crossword clues for treenail
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Wiktionary
alt. A wooden peg or pin used as a fastener. n. A wooden peg or pin used as a fastener.
WordNet
Wikipedia
A treenail, also trenail, trennel, or trunnel, is a wooden peg, pin, or dowel used to fasten pieces of wood together, especially in timber frames, covered bridges, wooden shipbuilding and boat building. Many such buildings and bridges are still in use. Locust is a favorite wood when making trunnels in shipbuilding due to its strength and rot resistance and red oak is typical in buildings.
A method of firmly securing such a fastener in shipbuilding was to cut a parallel peg of a softer wood, and then expand its outer end with a wedge of much harder wood driven into it called a foxtail wedge.
Ancient shipbuilding used treenails to bind the boat together. They had the advantage of not giving rise to "nail-sickness", a term for decay accelerated and concentrated around metal fasteners. Increased water content causes wood to expand, so that treenails gripped the planks tighter as they absorbed water. Similar wooden trenail fastenings were used as alternatives to metal spikes to secure railroad rail-support "chairs" to wooden sleepers in early Victorian times.
Traditionally trunnels and pegs were made by splitting bolts of wood with a froe and shaping them with a drawknife on a shaving horse.
Usage examples of "treenail".
He was driving an octagonal oak treenail into the gushing bolt hole with accurate smashing hits, the water cutting off to a trickle, then nothing.
Next to it was a green deck representing forest wealth: trees to be sold as masts to shipbuilders in Waterholm, maples to be tapped for syrup, horn-beams for treenails, cedars for shingles, and more.
Then she tipped agonisingly to starboard with the bowsprit snapping and the hull rupturing as its planks bowed and cracked and their treenails popped free like corks.
Half a ton of mixed nails, nine thousand treenails, three tons of lead .
Next to it was a green deck representing forest wealth: trees to be sold as masts to shipbuilders in Waterholm, maples to be tapped for syrup, horn-beams for treenails, cedars for shingles, and more.
During the first fortnight he had worn himself raw, pulling on ropes, helping to saw wood, beating home treenails and wedges, and he had suffered much from the inherent malignity of things - no rope, pulled over the most innocent surface, that did not succeed in twisting upon itself or catching in some minute anfractuosity or protrusion.
Eighteen thousand treenails locked futtocks and planks, beams and breasthooks, stem and stern-post .
The ribs of the schooner curled up from the keelson like the skeleton of some sleek sea beast cast ashore, embraced by the cradle that held them in place while the frame was spiked and treenailed together.