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The Price of Nails Since 1695

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Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#31

Post by WalterBright »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time nails were valuable enough to be passed on to offspring in the estate of a deceased person. It was also pretty common to recycle them when taking something apart, not to remelt them but simply to re-use them after straightening.

> It was also pretty common to recycle them when taking something apart, not to remelt them but simply to re-use them after straightening. When I was kid, my grandfather (born early 1920s in the southern US, so grew up in the Great Depression) had a coffee can in his shop where he'd put pulled nails, that I would get to hammer back straight. Good hammering practice!

My dad would collect bent nails for straightening. He grew up in the Depression.

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#32

Post by willmadden »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #27
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about galvanized nails? Surely those did not exist even 150 years ago?

Galvanization is a process that happens after initial manufacturing of the nail. To get to that stage, it must already have been made by one of those two techniques.

Well, I do know that cut/square nails are vastly superior to the glorified sharpened steel wire we use today. Square nails don't cause wood to split like rounded wire nails do. It's a great example of older superior technology being replaced due to cost.

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#33

Post by [deleted] »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time nails were valuable enough to be passed on to offspring in the estate of a deceased person. It was also pretty common to recycle them when taking something apart, not to remelt them but simply to re-use them after straightening.

> It was also pretty common to recycle them when taking something apart, not to remelt them but simply to re-use them after straightening. When I was kid, my grandfather (born early 1920s in the southern US, so grew up in the Great Depression) had a coffee can in his shop where he'd put pulled nails, that I would get to hammer back straight. Good hammering practice!

[deleted]

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#34

Post by buildsjets »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #13
dwater wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia’s history of nails, wire (round) nails came out in about 1860. I’ve lived in 4 houses built before 1930 That were all full of them. Cut nails continued to be used for masonry through the present.

What about galvanized nails? Surely those did not exist even 150 years ago?

This company has been manufacturing galvanized nails since 1819 (203 years), and their current factory building has been making galvanized nails continuously since 1848 (174 years).

http://web.archive.org/web/20210612014407/https://www.tremon...

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#35

Post by mikewarot »

worthless-trash wrote: post #4
dan-robertson wrote: post #2

> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries This is probably more true for nails than many other things. It also has problems when looking at the details with (older style) cut nails working better than wire nails in some applications but being more expensive. The article discusses these but I would have liked it if the article…

> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries While 'somewhat' true, its also untrue. Modern nails are different from the nails in the 60's. Modern nails are rounded. Many of the 1960s nails are square with sharp edges, a completely different manufacturing technique. I imagine that these were either forged in shape or cut from sq…

"Cut nails", the traditional wedge shaped ones, cut the fibers as the nail goes in. Modern wire nails, with their sharp points, shove the fibers to the sides, increasing the risk of splitting.

Additionally, the fibers cut by the traditional nails form a natural wedge, making those nails far harder to pull out.

You can improve the performance of a wire nail by simply blunting the tip with a hammer.

For more info, here's are two videos about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rwcGXIORro

and - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBUE_C8XHE

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#36

Post by CSMastermind »

If I'm reading this correctly:

- After a long period of getting cheaper in real terms, nails have started to get more expensive (you get less nail for your money in 2022 than you did in 1992).

- The main driver of this cost increase is more expensive labor and services, essentially human time is becoming more expensive to purchase.

- This rise is cost is unlikely to be felt by the average consumer because we have both on an individual level and as a nation have gotten wealthier so that increased cost is coming out of a larger pool of money.

Is that a fair summary of the current state of things?

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#37

Post by omegaham »

dan-robertson wrote: post #2

> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries This is probably more true for nails than many other things. It also has problems when looking at the details with (older style) cut nails working better than wire nails in some applications but being more expensive. The article discusses these but I would have liked it if the article…

> nail sizes in the US are still typically given in pence

Reminds me of the Primus song. "Seen 'em down in SoCo pounding sixteen-penny nails."

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#38

Post by joe_the_user »

tasha0663 wrote: post #15
WalterBright wrote: post #6

I hadn't realized how valuable and useful nails were until I toured Monticello, and there was a nailery out back. I.e. you couldn't just go buy a bag of nails, you had to make them yourself.

> you had to make them yourself Well... not quite... > Up to fourteen young male slaves, aged ten to twenty-one, worked at the forges of the nailery. From 1794 to 1796, while he was in temporary retirement at Monticello, Jefferson calculated the efficiency of the nailers, each day weighing their nail rod and the nails they produced. (Source: https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/nai... ) Though it…

Yes, the thing about a plantation was that because the slaves were already purchased and their labor could be used for agriculture only part of the time, if you needed something, having a slave make it made a lot of economic sense. A lot of the large plantations had nearly everything made by hand, by a slave or group of slaves.

And this impeded trade, manufacture and automation.

Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695

#39

Post by [deleted] »

willmadden wrote: post #32
quietbritishjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Galvanization is a process that happens after initial manufacturing of the nail. To get to that stage, it must already have been made by one of those two techniques.

Well, I do know that cut/square nails are vastly superior to the glorified sharpened steel wire we use today. Square nails don't cause wood to split like rounded wire nails do. It's a great example of older superior technology being replaced due to cost.

[deleted]
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