Home Blog meticulously documenting 19th century residential and commercial square or machine "cut" iron nails

meticulously documenting 19th century residential andcommercial square or machine "cut" iron nailsThis entry was posted on September 4, 2015 by Eric.

in preparation for my "deconstructing chicago" publication (slated for completion after "unearthingchicago hits circulation), i continue data­gathering by documenting any and all building materialused in the construction of the balloon frame, beginning from the 1840's on through the1880's. all of the material collected thus far has been carefully harvested from numerousdemolitions happening all around the city of chicago. in prior posts, i've provided hundreds ofimages of sill plate sections, with an emphasis on the various configurations of connectivitybetween these large beams that rest on limestone, cedar posts, or several courses of brick.

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john kent russell house (1855­71)building material traveling teachingaid kit

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meticulously documenting 19thcentury residential and commercialsquare or machine "cut" iron nails

unearthed finds from an undisturbedand remarkably preserved 19thcentury chicago family's privy vault

an interesting side note: the structures where the sills rest directly on the limestone are hard to come by, whereas the cottagesresting on brick are the most common. this is because most of these wood­framed structures were required to have a brickfoundation based on revised building codes following the great chicago fire. the houses supported by cedar posts are also quitecommon, since so many houses were being moved all around the city throughout the latter half of the 19th century.

this post focuses on the square or cut nails, or "spikes", i've carefully removed from the sill plates, studs and moldingsin demolished houses and commercial buildings spanning a fifty year period (i.e., 1840­1890). all of the nails are comprised of

iron (more malleable and thus, less susceptible to breaking) with machine cut shanks and hand­hammered heads that involvedthe use of heading tools. the shanks are largely consistent throughout, although a fraction do contain beveled or chamferededges around the widest point of the tapered shank, just under the nail head. no two nail heads are alike, but raised circle andsquare profiles are found on the larger "spikes" that were used in sill plate joinery.

a short history of the nail and its fabrication (written by mark chervenka) is provided below.

nails are fasteners because of the cellular structure of wood on the microscopic level. as a nail is driven into wood, the tip of thenail pushes apart or crushes wood cells in its path. when the tip of the nail passes, the cells spring back and try to resume theirformer positions. this applies pressure to the nail shank in the opposite direction of the nail path and creates resistance whichholds the nail in place. the principle is the same for all nails old or modern regardless of shape or how they were made.mathematical formulas can accurately predict the holding power of nails based on size of nail, depth nail is driven, and thespecies and moisture content of the wood.

sill plate "spikes" salvaged from the john kent russell house (c. 1855) during its demoliton.nails have been in use since the beginning of the bronze age, ca. 1800 b.c. from that time to the beginning of the 19th century, ca.1790­1810, most nails were made entirely by hand at the forge. a nail cutting machine designed in the 1790s cut the nail's shankand reduced hand labor to only forming the head of the nail. at the time of their introduction, these machine cut nails were

sometimes referred to as "cold nails" because they were not made at the forge. these machine/handmade nails were used up tothe end of the 19th century. by the 1890s, the entire nail was completely machine formed producing the rounded shank or wirenail that continues in use today.

american hand wrought nails­­those made entirely by hand or headed by hand­­were done by metal workers specializing in nail­making as well as blacksmiths who made nails part time or to order. the work was hard and gave rise to an early expression, "towork like a nailer" used to describe any intense activity. most of these nails were formed from a nail rod, a bar of iron availablefrom iron mills close to the approximate size of the nail. nail rods were at first imported by american nail makers from mills inengland but later used bars made in the colonies.

the first step in making a hand forged nail was to form the shank. next, the head was formed with a heading tool. early nails havetwo types of heads: a round head whose head is above the surface of the wood and used for general purpose fastening and a t­head whose head is driven below the surface and used for finish work. the forged round head nail is also called a rosehead because the hammered head often resembles the petals on a rose. a variation of the t­head, the l­head, is the same as a t­head but with half the head cut off. cross sections of pre­1800 nails are generally square; shanks from 1800­1890 are rectangular;modern shanks are round.

the earliest forged nails are identified by their irregular shanks and hammer marks on both shanks and heads. when viewed fromabove, early round heads have a meandering outline that is anything but round. later machine cut shanks will still showhammering which was necessary to form the head. fully machine­made nails used since the 1890's have round shanksand round heads.

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