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.