The fact that nail and nail are the same word confused me for a lot of time while staring at this
The Price of Nails Since 1695
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#62Earlier 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.
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Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#63Earlier 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.
The flipside being, when is the last time you heard of a house falling apart because the modern nails weren't good enough?
Sometimes good enough and 10x cheaper is the right call.
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#64ACOUP has a great collection on ironworking and the generally insane amount of labor and fuel that went into premodern iron production, including nails:
https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
Demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPdviIiNAM8
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#65> 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…
Without looking it up, I'd assume nails in 1960s were made of steel. Not much iron going around since the end of the 19th / early 20th century anymore.
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#66> 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…
To my knowledge, there's one company making cut nails for woodworking[0] in the US. The pricing might be somewhat distorted by the fact that they're a specialty item rather than the commodity that wire nails are.
Blacksmith forged nails are still available (if you know a blacksmith, not at your local hardware store). They're likewise a specialty item.
Incidentally, the surname Naylor was once an occupational surname for a person who made nails.
[0] AIUI, masonry nails are more likely to be cut nails, but they're hardened, so they aren't really interchangeable for woodworking.
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#67I found this to be an enlightening and fun article. The one negative I would flag is that it is US-centric and - while nails did not change much during that period - the US was created as a collection of states while being settled by colonizers. That was a very disruptive geographic phase. It would probably be more useful to have run a similar study against Europe during this period. While the formation of nation sta…
Considering that the US basically became the leading edge of manufacturing technology at that time, it makes sense.
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
And far too valuable to discard frivilously - I heard a medieval historian bewailing the cinematic convention of cutting a prisoner's bonds when setting them free, basically "do they not know how many hours of work it took to make a good rope? Nobody poorer than Alexander the Great would go slashing knots!"
was it Lindybeige? He has a bit on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfpQzV2GnM
I thought of the same. Just wouldn't go as far telling Lindy a historian.
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#69I 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…
I won't sound offending, um anecdotic ^^ but, i remember Smith's ('men of iron') talking that: 'It hadn't been more than 5 hammerhits to cut a screw nut (of a fist-size)', so do you feel like 'batman' taling about 'sharped wire' done by servants? More objective...
But you got me with this topic by 'someone on the internet saying', Natural price formation is the only socio-economic challenge? (-;
regards
Re: The Price of Nails Since 1695
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope I'm not ignoring, but it is possible. I don't know how to capture the instability in either region by some sort of a metric to make them comparable. However, the examples you give seem almost insignificant in comparison to events at the same time in Europe. For example, in 1900s Soviet Union alone forcefully displaced more than 20 million people. In the 1700s and 1800s Europe saw several wars, which claimed mi…
I reacted to this "The colonizers of the US were largely immigrants from Europe, who were fleeing war, oppression, famine or other calamity. There has never been any comparable immigration from the US to Europe (or indeed to anywhere). To me this indicates very strongly which region has been stable or not." In terms of wars and moving away, US had a lot of action going on. US history is actually interesting. * 1695 -…
The topic of slavery in the US is something that is not very familiar to me. One characteristic difference seems to be that the structure in Europe was largely that of serfdom. In that respect the massive forced movement that you mention is something that I definitely did not consider. The economic impact of slavery, and in the context of stability, especially that of abolition, is interesting. I should read up on that.
I completely agree that the Civil War was a major conflict with a lot casualties and it redefined the society. But around the same time, there were four equally bloody and society defining wars in Europe (one of them resulting in the genocide of more than a million Circassian people, two others to the birth of the German nation state), and many more before and after those.
As a matter of fact, Europe continues to suffer from a lot of instability, it seems like another war may break out between Russia and Ukraine any day now. I'd much prefer people made and used nails instead of raised conflicts.