Paul Pedersen wrote:

> 
> Off-hand I'd say I'll be needing at least a couple hundred
> treenails.  Is there some trick to producing these in a timely
> fashion, or does one have to hack them out one at a time using
> a hatchet ?  Hewing each one by hand could easily amount to
> the most time-consuming operation of the whole construction.
>

The way I've seen it done it to first roughly shape the wood into a
cylinder. Then take a steel plate with the approprately size hole
drilled into it. The plate needs to be firmly mounted horizontally
becuase you are going to start whacking the wood through the hole with a
mallet to achieve the cylindical shape. The neatest mount for this I've
seen was a section of log about two feet tall with the plate mounted in
the middle and a hole drilled down into the log  and then out through
the side forming a chute.  Since your timbers are only 4x4's then the
treenails won't be that big so  I would just screw the plate onto a
block of wood and clamp that in a machinists vise and start whacking. I
think they would normall be tapered using a draw kniw but these will be
small enough that I would just wittle then down with a pocket knife

Dan (again giving answers without any actual experience doing it)