pinning ships

My UNSC CVL was drilled by the Master 
Shipwright at His Majesty's Royal Ottawa 
Shipyard (Fleet Admiral Bell, reknowned for 
bringing his fleet through the bloodbath of last 
years CanAm FT entirely unscathed and 
returning it to repair dock pristine after a 
liesurely shakedown cruise). He drilled all the 
way through the middle sections, and we used 
a piece of sturdy brass rod as a centerline 
support. The rod used was about 1/16" or 1/8" 
I'd guess. Sturdy. That ship, she won't be 
looking off-angle, nor coming apart. Installation 
of the rod with epoxy or cyanoacrylate solidifies 
the installation. 

The problem with some epoxies and with 
cyanoacrylate is it has good longitudinal 
strength, but it has crappy torsional 
characteristics. (In plain english, it handles pulls 
apart between two parts with a straight pull 
well, but if you add a twist, that's usually all she 
wrote and the stuff parts). 

This is why pinning is such an effective addition 
to many joints (in the UNSC case, it is more an 
alignment issue and support for the weightier 
ships). Some models are just heavy (another 
great pinning candidate is my GZG 25mm Uber 
Resin Dropship. That sucker is so big and uses 
so much resin that pinning its sections together 
(after a bunch of work on the pour surfaces 
with a bastard file) was very sensible. 

Of course, if you do pinning regularly, you 
benefit from having a large quantity of variable 
sized brass rod, a pin vise, and a dremel + drill 
press with variable sized sharp bits at hand. 

Tomb. 
---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site
"In God We Trust... on Cold Steel We Depend."