Nails are the most common fasteners used in construction.

Up to the end of the Colonial period, all nails used in the United States were handmade. They were forged on an anvil from nail rods, which were sold in bundles. These nail rods were prepared either by rolling iron into small bars of the required thickness or by the much more common practice of cutting plate iron into strips by means of rolling shears.

Just before the Revolutionary War, the making of nails from these rods was a household industry among New England farmers. The struggle of the Colonies for independence intensi?ed an inventive search for shortcuts to mass production of material entering directly or indirectly into the prosecution of the war. Thus came about the innovation of cut nails made by machinery.With its coming, the household industry of nail making rapidly declined. At the close of the eighteenth century, 23 patents for nailmaking machines had been granted in the United States, and their use had been generally introduced into England, where they were received with enthusiasm.

In France, lightweight nails for carpenter’s use were made of wire as early as the days of Napoleon I, but these nails were made by hand with a hammer. The handmade nail was pinched in a vise with a portion projecting. Afewblows of a hammer ?attened one end into a head. The head was beaten into a countersunk depression in the vise, thus regulating its size and shape. In theUnited States,wire nails were ?rst made in 1851 or 1852 by William Hersel of New York.

In 1875, Father Goebel, a Catholic priest, arrived from Germany and settled in Covington, Kentucky. There he began the manufacture of wire nails that he had learned in his native land. In 1876, the American Wire and Screw Nail Company was formed under Father Goebel’s leadership. As the production and consumption of wire nails increased, the vogue of cut nails, which dominated the market until 1886, declined.

The approved process in the earlier days of the cut-nail industry was as follows. Iron bars, rolled fromhematite ormagnetic pig, were fagotted, reheated to a white heat, drawn, rolled into sheets of the required width and thickness, and then allowed to cool. The sheet was then cut across its length (its width being usually about a foot)into strips a little wider than the length of the required nail. These plates (heated by being set on their edge on hot coals) were seized in a clamp and fed to the machine, end ?rst. The cutout pieces, slightly tapering, were squeezed and headed up by the machine before going to the trough.

The manufacture of tacks, frequently combinedwith that of nails, is a distinct branch of the nail industry, affording much room for specialties. Originally it was also a household industry, and was carried on in New England well into the eighteenth century. The wire, pointed on a small anvil, was placed in a pedal-operated vise, which clutched it between jaws furnished with a gauge to regulate the length. A certain portion was left projecting. This portion was beaten with a hammer into a ?at head.