Nail MakingKit Hackforth

Introduction:Nails are an important component of any medieval blacksmith’s repertoire, teaching plane and dimensional control with hammer blows, developing the crucial ability to accurately measure lengths and sizes by inspection (without need for rulers or other measuring devices), as well as showing the value of working quickly and striking whilst the iron is hot.With the absence of any of these skills, the work is distorted, of irregular lengths, slow to be produced and potentially cracked or fractured around the head.

As nails were so commonly used, they were often produced in large quantities. Therefore speed of creation was a defining factor in their construction, whilst quality control was undoubtedly important, the variation in extant examples suggests that total uniformity was not a prerequisite so much as similarity of size and sheer quantity. Due to the large quantities of nails required and the menial nature of the labour, the job was often tasked to apprentices as an exercise to develop their skills and endurance with the hammer whilst still producing a marketable product for the master’s shop. It is reputedly a hallmark skill that a master blacksmith can produce about 100 nails an hour.From the colonial era, we have some extant examples of nail making stations, small setups dedicated to the production of forged nails. Given the lack of change in production methods this seems to reasonably suggest the potential for a similar setup in the shop of a period blacksmith who could reasonably expect to have a large demand for nails.

For reference, the inventory of King Henry VIII reported 48000 horse nails alone in storage and 3400 nails were reported as used in the construction of “the tower of Langeais, a rectangular, tapering stone tower built in 992-994”.

Williamsburg nail making station

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http://www.mooseforge.com/images/Nail%20Making/Williamsburg%20Nailmaking%20Station.jpg

Process:To make nails, a couple of tools are required.First and foremost, an appropriately sized nail header is needed. A hot cutter is required to indent the shaft so it can easily be broken, and lastly a hammer and anvil to square and shape the stock into nails.

First, the stock is heated and drawn out into a square taper, this is worked down to a point.The trick is being able to do this step in one heat, it requires a lot of concentration and fine control as when squaring stock, the stock can easily ”slip” and form a rhombus cross-section if the angle if strike is a little off.

Next the squared stock is put into the nail header to determine where it has to be cut.

After heating, the stock is placed on the hot cutter and cut almost through at a point just above where the nail would sit in the nail header.

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Lastly the stock is heated and placed once more in the nail header, the shaft is snapped off and the head is quickly flattened and peened over to form the head of the nail.

The nail is tapped out, into the water bucket and voila! One done nail.

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Usually a smith would have three sets of stock heating to make nails at any one time, cutting down on the time it takes to make nails by allowing the smith to work on one while the other two heated.This method of nail making is documented in many modern blacksmithing texts, and is still taught as a skill for beginners. As far as I can tell, this is the method used by period blacksmiths in making nails, but because blacksmiths traditionally passed their art down from master to apprentice and often down through families, there aren’t any outstanding documents I can find which detail how to make nails, or blacksmith anything really. Typical sources would involve examining paintings and extant examples and reverse engineering techniques shown. In this at least, I’ve had some luck, for while I can’t find any pictures of people making nails, extant examples are everywhere. This method of nail making has a couple of distinctive traits, firstly the squared, tapered shaft of the nail. Secondly the slight but distinctive bulge under the head of the nail, indicating a nail header was used. Fortunately all of the extant examples I’ve found show both these signs, which seems to indicate that this method has been used to forge nails more or less continuously from the times of the romans to the industrial revolution when obviously the wire nail technique was invented, leading to the modern nail.

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Nail comparison. Handmade, Cut, and WireAnd replica nail from the Mary rose, 1509http://www.glasgowsteelnail.com/nailmaking.htm

14th Century nailshttp://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/236476

For the sake of completeness; my nail header was forged some time ago, but recently I cut it down for neatness and a friend welded it to some bar stock as a handle for me. I then decided to forge out the handle and wrap it with a leaf as a bit of decoration.In fact, these nails are FOR that friend as a “Thank you for welding up my nail header” because he wants to do some period woodworking.

Analysis:

I’m pretty happy with my nails as a first attempt, some of the heads are a little split which is a result of peening the heads while the metal is cold, but this stopped once I realised what

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was happening.The nails aren’t sharp, so they will punch through wood rather than pierce, though I thought this was how period nails were made. While I’m pretty sure some still were made that way to prevent wood from splitting, I later found that the pointed nail seems more common.

Progression:In the future, my plan is to work on forging faster nails, finer points on the nails and work on forging the nail heads more uniformly. This mostly involves keeping more heat in the stock as it’s flattened and being quicker to peen the head over.I’m also looking to make another, smaller nail header to make narrower nails more suitable for modern woodwork, to allow beginner medieval woodworkers to get into the art.I’d also like to make a nail making station similar to the example shown from Williamsburg.

A somewhat summarised bibliography:

Inventory of King Henry VIIIhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventory_of_Henry_VIII_of_England

Medieval Priceshttp://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/medieval_prices.html

Williamsburg nail making station http://www.mooseforge.com/images/Nail%20Making/Williamsburg%20Nailmaking%20Station.jpg

The history of nail makinghttp://www.glasgowsteelnail.com/nailmaking.htm

THE PRODUCTS OF THE BLACKSMITH IN MID-LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 1-4Patrick Ottaway

14th century nailshttp://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/236476

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