My lake is coming out good.
Thanks guys. I need to put a pier down before I add the “water”.
Does anyone know where I can get some info about scratch building a pier?
I’m thinking it’s going to have to be two levels in order to make it down the water line.
Thanks
Glad to hear your lake is coming along well, however, need a little information before can help with a pier design. Large lake with ore boats or small lake with row boats coming in to it. Small piers can be pretty simple, some straight dowels to the lake bottom, couple of stringers, cross bracing and planking on top. Large piers can get pretty complex. Your shore line can make a difference too. I have seen steep rocky ledges above waterline that make long stairways necessary. In other places where the shore is fairly level and then the water gets deep fast, doesn’t take a very long pier.
Check the search box to the right to see what information there is from previous threads here. At the top of this page go to Resources - Index of Magazines to see what is available from the various articles.
Good luck,
sure check out bige61’s channel on youtube
Sounds like pier pressure. 
I scratch my concrete piers out of sheet styrene, and I use strip to trim out the top. I follow the practice of my prototype, which makes it a little easier…
For taller piers, I use a wood block to provide support, then slip the “concrete” sleeve over it.
…and for you HO fellows out there, I used masonite to build the piers for the Delmarva Club layout.
Hope that helps…
Lee
UGgghhh [(-D]
It sounds like you want a row boat pier on a lake. No two piers are alike. Use your imagination, a set of meat skewers and balsa wood for decking and cross braces. My large harbor double level pier is more commercial, with bait shack, etc, but will give you some ideas of what to do, to scratch build a pier. Click on upper left corner of photo to enlarge it. Then click on Zoom In Bob Hahn 
I was thinking the same thing. I think he is looking for a boat pier and not a bridge pier.
Back when I expected to make a living on salt water, those things people moored boats to were called docks. Piers were found along the North River side of Manhatattan and were a bit large for model railroad applications (They were 1100 feet from shore line to end.)
Chuck (Ex-Merchant Marine Cadet modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
If I recall my Navy terms more or less correctly:
• piers are structures that project into the waterway
• wharves are structures that are parallel to the waterway
• docks are the portions of waterways in which ships and boats are located when moored at a pier or wharf (hence the term “drydock” when they are out of the water for work or storage)
Dante