Bellerophon (or Elephant). Nails or Screws?

by John

I was at a stage in the construction of a 74 gun ship which necessitated attaching 8 pieces of plywood to the outside of the hull.

So what?

Well, each piece of 1mm thick plywood bends in 2 or 3 ways, which is reason that soaking the piece in hot water for 20-30 minutes prior to attaching it to the hull is recommended.

I did try attaching some of the simplest shapes dry, but that just did not work satisfactorily. So I removed them, soaked them and reattached them, with much better results.

This is the end result.

The ship, not the mess. Those pieces of plywood form the base for the above waterline planking, and also for the gunports. They were cut with the Falcon2 laser cutter. After soaking in hot water they were attached to the hull and left to dry out for a few hours. Then they were removed, glue applied and reattached.

Most model ship builders use small brass nails to attach pieces like this.
But I have an aversion to hammering on my carefully assembled hull and I decided to try using small screw eyes. (in the foreground of the above pic.) Yeah. I prefer screwing to banging.

I predrilled the ply, then inserted the screw eyes. First I tried just using my fingers, but that was hard, painful, and I dropped at least 50% of the eyes.

Then I tried long nose pliers but the eyes twisted in the pliers and again I dropped many of the eyes.

Then I tried rigging tool with a slot in the end. That worked amazingly well. It held the eyes and was easy to turn. But alas it snapped after using it on 2 or 3 panels.

The rigging tool before I broke it. It worked well, but was not designed for this abuse.

Then I had a brainwave. Remembering a tool which I had used every day in my surgical days….

The middle tool is a scalpel holder. It was ok inserting the eyes, but tended to unscrew when removing the eyes. At rear is a surgical haemostat. It worked ok, but it really is not designed for holding steel items 1mm diameter, and this use was really abusing it. So finally I tried using a straight needle holder, (at front) and that worked perfectly. It held the eyes very securely, and is designed for holding surgical needles very securely. I am amazed at myself for not thinking of this tool first off.

That particular needle holder is a single use instrument. i.e. used for one operation then thrown out. In this case, retrieved by me. Like me, you probably think that this is a shocking waste of resources, but these single use instruments are fairly inexpensive, and when cleaning, sterilizing, and repacking costs are taken into account, the costs stack up. And a few of them can have a second life for modellers!

Showing the screw eyes in use holding the ply in 3 different curves while the glue sets. The eye pushes against the ply holding it firmly against the bulkhead behind. The brass eye was used here because greater pressure was required. The broken part top left was fixed after gluing and sanding. I soaked all pieces after this mishap.

Here the upper pieces have been glued and the eyes removed. When all eyes were removed the pieces were sanded smooth, ready for the next layer, which is planks.