![]() ![]() ![]() Modern square-cut steel nails by Tremont Nail Company. ![]() By the early 1820’s, nail-making machines had become so efficient that America soon became the world’s leading manufacturer and exporter of nails. These produced square-cut nails by cutting them from iron rods. Nails primarily imported from England, right up until the Revolution.Īround the 1790’s, American inventors had prototyped the first nail making machines. Nail making was never done on a very large scale in the American colonies. When the first settlers began arriving in the New World in the early seventeenth century, they brought large quantities of wrought nails with them. The basic form of the modern wrought square nail was developed in sixteenth century Europe. Hand-forged iron nails predate the ancient Romans. Bottom: Two 2.5″ (8d) square-cut iron nails I extracted from a door jamb, causing an oyster shell to break free from surrounding plaster (oyster shells were used as thickeners in early plaster walls). Top: Hand forged 17th century iron nails and spike in the roof system of the Old Hawkins house, Derby, Connecticut. They are even available in bulk quantities. And perhaps even less well known is the fact that square nails are still manufactured today. They have several times the holding power, and are less likely to cause wood to split. What many of us are unaware of, however, is that those old nails were actually superior in design to modern wire nails. We’ve seen them on display at museum homes, or historical society exhibits, or perhaps being hammered out by blacksmiths in places like Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg. Most of us are familiar with the old square nails used centuries ago. ![]()
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