hand forged nails

[farmbif]

I spent some time today replacing rotted boards on my wood shed and much to my surprise I found hand forged nails in some of the boards protected by the overhanging tin roof. no one knows for sure how old my house is or the rest of the buildings on the property. county records only go back to 1900. but it is rumored that my place is the oldest in the valley here and older folks have said parts of the house are at least as old as civil war. the woodshed might be the oldest structure on the property and the tobacco barn is made of all axe cut and axe shaped logs, no saw marks on any of the wood in there.
I'm guessing hand forged nails could push the date back to the 1830's or earlier. anyone know anything about this kind of stuff.

[country gent]

A lot of the old timers would tear something down and salvage the nails out of it for future use. Was one of the boys chores to straighten the nails for use again. At one time nails were a precious commodity yours are some of those.

[15meter]

The house I was raised in was started in 1850 according to the township records. Like most homes from that era, they were added onto as money was available. During remodeling of the oldest section, dad and I pulled a lot of cut nails. That section, outer headers were hand hewn 8x8's. Floor joists were logs mortised into the 8x8's. With bark still on several of them.

3 years ago my mother passed away and I had the dubious pleasure of being the executor of the estate.

The people who bought the house paid for a home inspection. The inspector made up a fancy report with a whole bunch of photos and a description of each one.

Best photo was of one of the log floor joists with no bark with some bug holes highlighted.

Description read: "evidence of insect infestation, no current insect activity detected but a certified exterminator should be brought in".

170 year old bug holes needed an exterminator.

Got a good laugh out of that one.

[Battis]

My house was built in 1892 and all the old nails I've found during renovations are square. A half mile from my house, on a river, was a nail factory built in 1795. Jacob Perkins, the man who built the nail factory near my house, is mentioned in this article. Are they the same as hand forged nails? Not sure.
https://monroeengineering.com/blog/c...he-difference/

[GregLaROCHE]

I’ve come across lots of them over here. Lots of times they were driven completely through and bent over forming something like a rivet.

[pworley1]

I remember that my grandfather had an anvil that had a slot and hole he used to make horseshoe nails.

[HWooldridge]

Cut nails and hand forged are two different things. You will find square nails that were cut from sheet iron in a factory and never touched by a smith.

Wiki has this to say:

The history of the nail is divided roughly into three distinct periods:
Hand-wrought (forged) nail (pre-history until 19th century)
Cut nail (roughly 1800 to 1914)
Wire nail (roughly 1860 to the present)

I've run a blacksmithing shop on the side for about 40 years and I shudder to think about making nails all day, every day...or by the fireplace in the evening, which is what a lot of families practiced as a cottage industry before factory nails replaced the need.

[Gator 45/70]

I spent some time today replacing rotted boards on my wood shed and much to my surprise I found hand forged nails in some of the boards protected by the overhanging tin roof. no one knows for sure how old my house is or the rest of the buildings on the property. county records only go back to 1900. but it is rumored that my place is the oldest in the valley here and older folks have said parts of the house are at least as old as civil war. the woodshed might be the oldest structure on the property and the tobacco barn is made of all axe cut and axe shaped logs, no saw marks on any of the wood in there.
I'm guessing hand forged nails could push the date back to the 1830's or earlier. anyone know anything about this kind of stuff.

You can always send one off to the local university for testing the metal which possibly could date those nails for you?

[beemer]

I’ve come across lots of them over here. Lots of times they were driven completely through and bent over forming something like a rivet.

That was an acceptable practice called clinching. I've seen it many times especially on shed doors, it's hard to tear apart.

I've heard my Dad talk about people burning old run down houses for the nails, really hard times.

There is an old house place down the road that has a cabin on it. The last three owners have talked about restoring it but I think it's too much for one person to handle and do properly. It has been added to and worked on over the years. Several years ago someone from the historical society looked at it and said the construction looked about mid to late 1700's. Who knows, the history has been lost. The last person who lived there died in 1971. He was born there in 1879, it was his grandfathers home. I was young when I met him, wished many times I had had enough sense to set down and talk to him.

[Bmi48219]

A lot of the old timers would tear something down and salvage the nails out of it for future use. Was one of the boys chores to straighten the nails for use again. At one time nails were a precious commodity yours are some of those.

‘Old Timer’ is one of those relative terms. We straightened and salvaged nails right up to the late 60’s. In 1973 I contracted to remove the year old maple flooring from two handball courts. The floors were 20 or so feet below grade and had been flooded overnight when a sump pump failed. Each court was 800 square feet. I hauled the flooring to my dad’s house and he pulled all the flooring nails, sorted it for length and bundled it. Pulling those pneumatically installed flooring nails / brads was a total pain. We installed maple floors in the cottage we built on Lake Eire. Incidentally we dug the basement for that cottage by hand, laid the 12” block foundation walls using mortar made with beach sand I had screened and sifted.
Guys that grew up during the depression reused everything.

[farmbif]

I was just out there filling the shed with split wood and got looking at the boards I removed. it is a very heavy wood, kind of a medium brown almost reddish like the inside bark of sassafras tree. and I cant identify it, maybe it's chestnut? I dont know. I replaced the boards with red cedar and the old wood is probably 3x the weight of the local red cedar. got to thinking maybe send a sample off for age testing, yeah, but then looking into that a single carbon dating test costs are $300- $450. curiosity has got ahold of me wondering how old the structure is. after all this was Davey Crocketts stomping grounds way back when and there are log cabins not too far from here that are from his era.

[Winger Ed.]

It's hard to date something from the nails used to build it.
Nails used to be VERY expensive, and are one of the original things that got recycled.

[Gewehr-Guy]

I have made a few nails just to learn how. While in high school I worked {mostly just hung around and drank beer} with the town's blacksmith, and watched him make nails for a wooden trunk he was making for a fellow buckskinner. He used them to attach large ornate forged hinges he made for the trunk. Also watched him make tomahawks, of which he made over 1000, from the late 70's through the late 80's.

On our farm was an old shed from the early 1880's that was shingled with small square {cut} nails, have never seen those on any other old buildings, but the large cut nails for framing were common.

[Bazoo]

I am definitely interested in this as I love the history. You can still buy cut nails as masonry nails. I was born in the 80s, and as a kid, if I needed nails, I generally recycled them. I also have seen a lot of round nails that were bent over in barn construction. It makes a stronger structure for places that cows are rubbing against.

[GregLaROCHE]

As a kid, I straightened a lot of nails for my projects.

[HWooldridge]

I grew up in the 1960's - my grandfather was a Depression survivor. He gave me a magnet, a hammer, and a small anvil made from a railroad rail. My daily duty was to walk around his job sites with the magnet and pick up all the nails, then straighten them on the anvil. He would then toss them back in the nail bucket for the framers to load into their aprons the next morning.

He brought home a bunch of wooden crates once that held large windows for a bank job. We tore down everything and scavenged enough wood and nails to build roof trusses for a 20x20 pole barn. Like my dad used to say, one man's trash is another's treasure.

[Bmi48219]

I am definitely interested in this as I love the history. You can still buy cut nails as masonry nails…

I haven’t bought masonry nails in decades but the ones I saw (still have a box or two) were / are a lot harder / more brittle than wire cut nails.
I worked with some bricklayers from Kentucky. They used long horseshoe nails for line pins on firebrick jobs. Never cared for that idea myself. When the line is under 30-40 lbs of stretch a line pin that slips loose can be deadly.
In the late 70’s my buddy bought an old farm house in the middle of a Detroit suburb. IIRC it dated to the 1860’s. We found square head nails on every repair we did.

[JSnover]

I remember that my grandfather had an anvil that had a slot and hole he used to make horseshoe nails.

This process and the tooling were described in one of Louis L'amour's books. It was a common winter activity for homesteaders if I recall.

[15meter]

Clinching nails right is a two man job, one holding his hammer HARD against the head of the driven nail and the helper, usually the kid, on the other side bending it over. Wire nails were best, recycled square cut nails(not masonry nails) broke off too often.

And I've straightened and reused nails in the last 6 months. Old habits die hard and I was too lazy to walk back to the shed to get just a couple of nails.

[Bazoo]

I have straightened a few nails myself in the last few months. I thought everyone did that.