jlpservicesinc Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Years back when I was doing my investigation work I was lucky enough to find a very old burnt out colonial era home that was still partially standing.. It was an abandoned property and burnt back in the 80's more than likely it was kids that were partying in the house... anyhow, I spent countless hours there looking at all the nails or I should say all the variety of nails... The thing that really stuck with me is the consistency between them all.. When the house burnt it was like it smoldered and only removed the first 2" or so off all the wood nearly everything for 2 walls and then moved away from there was more damage with the farthest part away had fallen into the cellar.. Yup, it had a root cellar.. Every single nail that was exposed was nearly identical to the next.. they were all a Roset T head and they were all nearly perfect both in shape, length and shank size.. I must have pulled 50 nails and I was always expecting the next one to be different as I had only seen modern smiths At OSV make nails and each nail was different, but nope all the same.. I then moved into siding nails, trim nails etc, etc and every one of them were the same for the style of nail.. I might still have a jar of them hanging around somewhere.. I pulled 50 of them to have as a reference but even after sitting exposed like that with only 2 walls and nearly completely burnt away that last inch of nail had holding powers like I had never seen.. After pulling off 25 heads I gave up figuring I'd get back there at some point with more than a claw hammer.. 2 months later they brought in an excavator and completely filling in the whole thing.. I later found out the property had been seized as an abandoned property when the owner passed away and had no Aires.. and it was bought from the town with 100 acres for little money... They built a house just to the side of the old foundation stones.. It one of those things where I wish I had spent the extra time pulling out everything I could of.. I have had that happen on 5 different occasions.. one was an old creosote plant, this house, and old factory building, an old water powered dam site and another burnt out house.. Every single one of them fell victim to someone buying the property from the town and building new.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 5 hours ago, VaughnT said: I can certainly believe that after watching this guy get at it! I wonder sometimes if that film is running at true speed — it seems just a hair sped up as so many early films do when played on later equipment. Impressive technique, nonetheless. Let’s assume that a nail that takes ten seconds in the film really took fifteen. That’s four nails per minute, 240 nails per hour, 2,400 nails in a ten-hour workday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c.baum Posted October 30, 2017 Author Share Posted October 30, 2017 Successfully made some nails and a nail header today (you may now imagine me grunting like a real man). Still not sufficient, but i hope i'm getting better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 congrats.. You decided to drill than punch the header?... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c.baum Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 Yes, i first drilled a hole and then punched it. Works too, but if you have a close look at the shank you see it. Additionally you have to keep in mind that you have to drill the hole smaller than the desired shank size. I did not. Next stept will be a nail header beeing punched completely. Lesson learned... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Nothing wrong with what you did. It's a functional tool.. Unles you drill way undersized that pesky rounded broached look won't go away.. Only way is to thru punch it like in the how to video.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted November 16, 2017 Share Posted November 16, 2017 So I am a very skilled woodworker in addition to being a decent smith. I have concentrated my efforts on making high quality nails rather than turning out large numbers of them. I find that the holding power of my hand forged nails will exceed that of screws in most applications! For large nails that I will ask to penetrate 150+ year old oak logs. I will use some 4140 or other medium carbon stock... instead of mild steel. I’ll also pre-drill for such applications. The only modern fasteners that rival the holding power of my forged nails are power driven hot-glued ring shank nails! They will hang on but lack the style and versatility of my own nails. I make nails with various lengths and varying head sizes and styles. Sometimes I want a thin short nail with a large decorative or structural head on it! Sometimes a long heavy nail with a very minimal head on it. Whatever my need or wish I can get a pretty good result from my forging work! Salvaged rebar processed into square rod stock on my power hammer makes quite useful nail stock for general use. When I want nails of good size with larger heads, I will start with large stock and taper it and even start the nail shanks on my power hammer. If you want to do 1,000 plus nails per day you’ll never experience the extreme quality that I desire in my nails! You will be too busy rushing onward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted November 16, 2017 Share Posted November 16, 2017 47 minutes ago, bigfootnampa said: If you want to do 1,000 plus nails per day you’ll never experience the extreme quality that I desire in my nails! You will be too busy rushing onward. Well don't hold out, show us some these beautiful nails.. After a few hundred a person of skill can get very precise and quick.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 Okay. Here’s a few of my nails. These are nothing special, just general stock. The longer ones are about 4”. I’m not a highly experienced (or therefore, skilled) nail maker. My nails do amaze me with their performance though! What I am saying is that there is no payoff for me in making many thousands of nails that are as swiftly made as I can do them... I’d still be working for pennies! When I can make nails that are able to function as permanent joinery for softwood furniture that also fit into a rustic design theme... NOW I’m being rewarded for my time! Sorry, I don’t have any of my special use nails at hand... they’ve all been used in the projects that they were custom forged for. I’ve posted some in the past but the files are buried now and I haven’t the time to dig them up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaughnT Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 The neat thing about making nails is that you can get good practice at a valuable skill (making tapers) for very little money invested. It's no wonder, JLP, that you found all those nails to be so perfectly matched since the person making them was likely a full-time maker of nails, or at least making nails as part of his duties at the smithy. When you've made several tons of something like that, you get to where you're very repetitive in motions and the resultant finished appearance. There's a fellow on FB that I follow, and he does some great work with making nails. The best part is the little jigs and such that he sets up so he can make nails rather uniform. I never thought about putting a rest on the stump to help control the bar stock you're using. Seems to me that it would make it a lot easier to control the length you're cutting at. And the two or three "dies" in the one little spring swage lets you go from raw stock to ready for heading in a blink or three. I'll try to find his page and put in a link so you can see all the various ways he goes about it. This spring swage seems sized for only making small hobnails for traditional footwear, but I'm sure it could be scaled up for other nail styles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 In the older days in the USA a good majority of the nails produced were as a cottage industry at piece work with Woman and children making a good majority of them.. They actually had a guy (Nail Monger) who would come around and supply you with a nail makers anvil with cutoff and a supply of materials.. the people would lease/rent this from the guy (I'm sure at a hefty price) and he would then pay them after the rental lease fee and leave more raw stock.. When in good forging shape a 10 penny 1.5" -2" length shank, 1/8" shank thickness takes a full minute to forge and head.. I used to run 3 to 4 bars at a time.. 1 heat per nail... Eventually you get good enough What really gets forgotten about nail making is they used to be made from wrought iron and since they were forged down into a small size the wrought was pretty well refined by the time it got to size.. so a a lot of the heading operations could be carried out in the black heat stage.. the majority of nails forged from wrought have the typical separation of the fibers in the heads on the edges unless the nail heads were swedged like slate nails, tacks, brads, horse shoe, oxen shoes, etc, etc.. There was of course a whole nail making industry in the UK, but they were a costly import and I think that is why the cottage industry took hold.. Eventually Benjamin Franklin produced and Iron slitting mill and this lowered the cost slightly as sheet could be cut into strips... Today, most modern hobbiest smiths don't really realize just how mundane the old blacksmiths job really was.. Most smiths in Rural new England (funny to think Ohio was the wild west) were part time unless they lived in larger industrial towns or were at a cross roads with lots of traffic and these guys would specialize in Farrier work and wagon repair as well as the other little jobs that came in.. When I was producing hardware in sets of 10 or more it really just became a grind.. Same thing over and over and over again. (this is how one gets good though). and then figure that for each thumblatch with escutcheon plates was 12 nails each.. 120 per order with 2 different sizes usually about 3/16 difference between latch and back group and length depending on door thickness. Being a full time smith like this takes some dedication to the craft because it's not a glorious profession and the only person who knows the quality of wears you are producing is the smith him/herself.. What I have seen happen is there are a lot of people who will use to good advantage spring swages, hardie swages etc, etc, in order to get to a consistent product in a fairly short order.. I understand this from a time stand point.. But being a purist at heart still leads me back to grunting it out at the anvil until it is mastered 100%.. At that point all the contraptions are no longer needed as it is just as fast to not need thees other things to produce what can be done with hammer and anvil... By the way.. back in my youth, I tried all sorts of schemes to make things quicker or better and since I didn't have anybody to tell me "No" that is foolish I tried it all.. found I was wasting a lot of time building machines and tooling only later to throw them into scrap.. The only tool that I found sped up any kind of production was a power hammer for the type of work I was doing and it saved a lot of yelling at the sledgers.. Which in some situations still work better than a power hammer.. there is a ton of interesting thoughts with people putting a lot of their thoughts into production.. More power to them.. This is going to sound corny... I am a blacksmith with a desire to forge metal by hand.. Using a power hammer can increase production and make it so I am not killing myself on larger sized stock.. This that said, i'd rather forge 99% of what I make to size by hand than to rely on a contraption to only save a few seconds at the anvil.. For people who embrace technology or contraptions they are at a different level.. for me it's anvil, hammer, vise and forge that I want to be at home with.. I'm really old though and long for a past live which never existed.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 Thomas was it you who said somthing about having a sheet of 1/4" 1018 sheared into nail bars? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted November 27, 2017 Share Posted November 27, 2017 Wasn't me, I don't think...; but I will remark that The Saugus Ironworks had a rolling and slitting set up for nail rods a generation or two before Ben Franklin was born... Here in the USA many of them were made by Farmers during the winter working out of their fireplace; Women's work didn't stop during the winter like much of farming did. "Ironworks on the Saugus" Hartley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anvil Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 On 11/24/2017 at 10:20 AM, jlpservicesinc said: But being a purist at heart still leads me back to grunting it out at the anvil until it is mastered 100%.. At that point all the contraptions are no longer needed as it is just as fast to not need thees other things to produce what can be done with hammer and anvil... My thoughts exactly and just the reason I do not use scroll jigs at all, amonst other thibgs They become far too confining once you realize you can be faster not using them, but I will not let my lil giant and treadle hammer set idle. And a note to farriers. Most that transition to traditional smithing do not realize two very important skills they bring to their new forge. The first is that every shoe is fitted to the horse 4 times per job. This is turned over the horn and leveled on the face of the anvil. If you can fit a shoe to a hoof with very little or no conscious thought, you can turn any shape you choose to draw. Just add a scrolling wrench and bending forks and start working in the horizontal with your vice. Scroll to a pattern piece and you can't be any quicker or more precise,,, you already have the training. The second is filing. The hardest shape to rasp, level and set the proper needed angles times 4 per horse is the hoof. Thick at the toe, thin in the quarters and open at the heels. So substitute your rasp for a half round bastard file and expand that well learned skill into adding flourishes and touches to your leaves, flowers, and finials of all sorts, quit thinking in one plane and go 3 dimensional, and your iron will blossom with new life. You already have mastered the basic and paid your dues whilst hunkered down under 1100 pounds of horse! Stand up straight and go for the gusto! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 Wish we had plus 1 on the threads.. Well said.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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