[TheForge] Re: nail header

[Mike Spencer]

> I happen to have one of Jerry Darnell's nails in front of me and while
> the shank is taper to a blunt point it is really quite rectangular
> except for the last 1/8 of an inch just below the head.  This short
> section is upset to the size of the header from forming the head.  The
> rest of the shank is the size that the nail was formed to before going
> into the header.

I just went and dug up a can of nails I pulled out of my house when I
was replacing sills -- a mixed bag of forged, cut and wire nails and a
few hand-headed cut nails.  Picked out 16 of the forged nails at random.

All but one are (more or less) uniformly square over half or two
thirds of the length, then taper to a point.  There is no appreciable
upset or broadening under the heads.  None of these have perfect
4-clout heads (although I recall pulling a few such out).  Some are
apparently "finish" nails, not pretty "butterfly" heads but um,
"repurposed" square heads that were bashed flat cold.  Sizes vary from
1-1/2" to 3-1/2".  The odd one is 3-1/2" and is visibly rectangular in
cross section instead of square with a head thinner and more crudely
mashed than average.

These are from a house built between 1860 and 1880.[1]  There's no way
for me to tell if the hand made nails are from that era.  Given the
intermix of cut nails in no recognizable pattern, it's a fair surmise
that the hand made nails are older, were recovered from a burned
building and were used along with cut nails in the original
construction with the wire nails being added during later repairs or
improvements. 

> In other words with the shouldering the nail is a very loose fit
> going into the header.  This also means that the nail comes out of the
> header very easily.  (You don't want the nail to upset below the short
> reverse taper at the top of the header or you will have an hourglass
> shape and it will stick.)

I never did get nail making to work right.  What is this "comes out of
the header very easily" of which you speak? :-) I'm going to have to
go out and try to put this discussion and this impromtu review of my
nail collection [2] to practical use.


- Mike

[1] Unusual construction.  Sills and plates are hewn timbers with long
    slots their full lengths.  The walls are 3" thick hemlock planks
    set on end into those slots and pegged together edgeways with
    hand-whittled pegs.  The corner posts are 8x8s but hewn out so
    that they're like 8"x8"x3" angle iron.  So there's no timber frame
    for the walls, just the planks and corner angles.  Birch bark over
    the planks, then 1" board sheathing and clapboards.  There are
    other houses around here of this construction but not very many.
    It appears that it was built over several -- possibly many --
    years and occupied during construction.

[2] Ca. 15# of old nails from the house squirreled away in coffee and
    tobacco cans.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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