Nail sick.

[AntarcticPilot]

I work a bit with wrought iron. Nightmare... The gates are from the turn of the last century and are entirely screwed or rivited. Welding is tricky and not strong.
But, for nails or bolts in a boat, probably very good. It does not rust like steel and since much of what I look at is well over 1OO yrs old, Corrosion is limited.

I'm speaking only from an interest in ancient metal-working technologies, and no practical experience at all! Isn't forge-welding the usual technique for welding wrought iron? Obviously difficult, if not impossible "in-situ", but should result in a strong result - after all, most ancient sword-blades are forge-welded, and wrought iron was originally produced by effectively forge-welding a sintered block of "sponge iron" to make a billet of wrought iron - early smelting furnaces did not reach a high enough temperature to melt the iron. Indeed, that's the origin of the name "wrought" iron! The spongy, slaggy block of iron from the smelting was simply heated to the welding point and hammered to a) weld the particles of iron together and b) express slag and impurities.

As you say, wrought iron is usually very resistant to corrosion; there are some very ancient examples - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi, for example.

 

[burgundyben]

Greetings,
Juniper is a species of tree, and its timber has been used for thousands of years for fastening wood sailing boats, in the form of tree nails, or trunnels etc.

I never knew that trunnels are made of juniper. The berries are of course good in gin and crushed on roast parsnips.

 

[Daydream believer]

When i refurbished my Tucker Brown built Stella it was in a really bad state. there were large areas of rot, planks had sprung at the bows. Ply decks had to be completely removed due to rot. Bulkheads had to come out. in the end I started from a bare hull.
the roves were not bad in themselves but the wood round them had rotted away so I could just tap them in or out as they were loose.
My solution was to sand blast the entire wooden hull. This tended to blow hole through the hull in a couple of places & where there were loose fastenings at the bow 6 of the planks sprung. the chain plates just rattled on the now totally loose bolts where the rotten wood around them had been blown away.
I originally intended to groove the joint between the lands with a 6mm groove. this I did with an angle grinder with a carving blade held flush to the planks. I grooved an entire boat in about 8 hours. I used the old fastenings as a guide for the depth which was 6mm. . I went round & tapped each fastening in flush with the outside of the hull. Tightening it did not work as it just split the plank.
I filled the gap using west epoxy with filler & rounded off. This turned a floppy hull into a watertight rigid hull & for most purposes is all the OP need do.
However I had 12 broken ribs plus I fitted a new inside & deck so I also sand blasted the inside. Then I coated the inside with a special thin resin supplied by Wessex. This leached through the hull & highlighted a lot of worm holes.
After that I re fitted the chain plates etc & sheathed the entire boat in 300 gram woven mat & west epoxy. I did it in 1M2 squares because dressing matt around clinkers is difficult. The matt was laid diagonally
The deck was nailed down with 2 inch SS nails prior to sheathing; the original having been done with galvanised nails
The boat , when finished was launched at Burnham Yacht harbour. I am told that Richard Mathews ( ex Oyster) refurbished his dad's old Stella -Scorpio -& when it was taken to Burnham for Burnham week they had to pump much of the way. (Mind you with keels that fall off I am not surprised !!!!!) If they could not make a hull watertight then an amateur might struggle.
When, a week after launching I went to the marina to see the boat, the manager congratulated me. He reckoned it was the first refurbished Stella that he had ever seen that never leaked a single drop of water.
So I suggest the Op could try just Westing the lands. ( Read the book by the Gudgeon Brothers for the method) or if he wants he could sheath it & solve the problem once & for all

 

[pyrojames]

It can be a disaster to refasten old iron dumps with bronze. It is impossible to get all the iron and rust from the planks and you set up a galvanic cell if the new bronze is in contact with the old iron or rust trapped in th timber.