Treenail

Treenail

A treenail, trenail, or trunnel is a wood peg, or dowel used to fasten pieces of wood together, especially in timber frame construction and wooden shipbuilding. It is an ancient technology. Covered bridges in the U.S. often use treenails as fasteners. Many such bridges are still in use.

A method of making such a fastener 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.

Ancient shipbuilding used treenails to bind the boat together. They had the advantage of not giving rise to "nail-sickness" which is a term for decay accelerated and concentrated around metal fasteners. Increased water content also causes wood to expand, so that treenails gripped the planks tighter as they absorbed water

References


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  • Treenail — Tree nail , n. [Tree + nail.] (Shipbuilding) A long wooden pin used in fastening the planks of a vessel to the timbers or to each other. [Written also {trenail}, and {trunnel}.] [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • treenail — [trē′nāl΄; ] also [ tren′əl, trun′əl] n. [ME trenayle < tre, TREE (in early sense “wood”) + nayle, NAIL] a very dry wooden peg used to join timbers, esp. in building wooden ships: it swells from moisture and ensures a tight joint …   English World dictionary

  • treenail — or trunnel; also trenail noun Date: 13th century a wooden peg made usually of dry compressed timber so as to swell in its hole when moistened …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • treenail — /tree nayl , tren l, trun l/, n. a wooden pin that swells when moist, used for fastening together timbers, as those of ships. Also, trenail, trunnel. [1250 1300; ME trenayl. See TREE, NAIL] * * * …   Universalium

  • treenail — noun A wooden peg or pin used as a fastener …   Wiktionary

  • treenail — long wooden pin used to fix planks of ship to the timbers Nautical Terms …   Phrontistery dictionary

  • treenail — (also trenail or US trunnel) noun a hard wooden pin used for fastening timbers together …   English new terms dictionary

  • treenail — n. Trunnel …   New dictionary of synonyms

  • treenail — tree·nail …   English syllables

  • treenail — tree•nail or trenail [[t]ˈtriˌneɪl, ˈtrɛn l, ˈtrʌn l[/t]] n. bui a wooden pin that swells when moist, used for fastening timbers • Etymology: 1250–1300 …   From formal English to slang

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