treenail

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tree·nail

or tre·nail (trē′nāl′, trĕn′əl, trŭn′əl) also trun·nel (trŭn′əl)

A wooden peg used as a fastener in building wooden ships or timber-frame buildings.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

treenail

(ˈtriːneɪl; ˈtrɛnəl) or

trenail

;

trunnel

(ˈtrʌnəl)

(Building) a dowel used for pinning planks or timbers together

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

tree•nail

or tre•nail

(ˈtriˌneɪl, ˈtrɛn l, ˈtrʌn l)

n.

a wooden pin that swells when moist, used for fastening timbers.

[1250–1300]

Trunnel

A wooden dowel used to prevent a wooden mortise and tenon joint from slipping apart. Trunnels were usually made of a hardwood such as oak or hickory.

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Noun

treenail - a wooden peg that is used to fasten timbers in shipbuilding; water causes the peg to swell and hold the timbers fast

trenail, trunnel

nog, peg - a wooden pin pushed or driven into a surface

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References in periodicals archive ?

As nails were not available all fastenings would be with trenails or wooden pegs driven through holes drilled by hand with an auger.

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Cheviller and cloer (7) are correctly identified as the two principal means of fastening together the planks of the hull, the ship's timbers to the hull, etc: 1) by means of wooden plugs, usually called trenails (tree-nails), which were inserted from the outside of the overlapping hull planks and then split on the inside end and fitted with a wooden wedge, often of willow, which would expand on exposure to water, all for the tightest fit; and 2) by iron nails, also driven in from the outside, then through a square iron rove over which the point of the nail was tipped.

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Trenails, joggles and wedges were employed to anchor the blocks down to the rock or the stone course below.