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5 Interesting facts about Nails |
1 The nail is generally hailed as a Roman innovation, although small nails and tacks cast in copper and other precious metals have been found in ancient Egyptian work. These Egyptian nails were used to hold furniture coverings in place.
2 Any sizeable Roman fortress would have its 'fabrica' or workshop where the blacksmiths would fashion the metal items needed by the army. The Roman iron nail was essentially the pattern for all nail-making from 3000 B.C. until the early 19th century. The most common shape was the "rosehead nail". Between the 1790s and the early 1800s, various machines were invented for making nails from bars of iron. The earliest machines chopped nails off the iron bar like a guillotine, wiggling the bar from side to side with every stroke to produce a tapered shank. The first machine to make nails from metal wire was introduced in the United States in about 1850, and this technique is now used to make most of the nails today. By 1886, 10 percent of the nails produced in the United States were made of soft steel wire. By 1913, 90 percent were wire nails. Cut nails are still made today, and are commonly used for fastening hardwood flooring.
3 The length of a nail is measured in a unit called the penny. This term comes from the use of nails in England in the late 1700s when it referred to the price of one hundred nails of that size. For example, a "two penny nail" would have cost two pennies per hundred. The symbol for penny is
"d," as in 10d. Today the term penny only defines the length of a nail and has nothing to do with the price.
4 Now matter which type of nails described above your using there are a few common tricks to improving the strength or accuracy of your nail joinery. One trick is to always drive the nails in at a slight angle. One other way to increase your accuracy with either of these grips is to extend your thumb out along the handle. Try it. It works. Gripping the hammer at the end of the handle increases the power in your stroke. Gripping it up at the swelling reduces power and can increase accuracy.
5 Tests performed by scientists showed that cut nails held far better than wire nails. How much better? Considerably - anywhere from 65 percent more to 135 percent more. Why? It’s mostly a matter of the wedging action of the taper. When a cut nail is driven in properly, the end grain of the board is driven against the nail’s taper, making the joint quite secure. Also, the rough surface finish of a cut nail is a feature, not a defect - it adds additional holding power to the cut nail.
You can buy handmade <a href="http://www.handforged.co.uk/nails.php">rosehead nails</a> at Handforged Ironmongery.
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