will this work?

Yes, it will. Whether it will do what you think it will do is a different question.

What are you trying to achieve?

get more hosts on a vlan that has been configured on one switch which only has 12 ports by plugging unconfigured switches or even hubs into the ports on the switch that has the vlans configured, thats all

In that case, yes.

The only place where there is any modification to the packets is on the trunk where the VLAN header has been added. So manual configuring the two switches (and the router) with trunk ports, and all the others as standard switch ports, you can hang other switches or hubs off the ports and they will effectively be in the same VLAN as the distribution switch to which they are connected.