Square nails?

Just curious why I see so many posts where people who find square nails clean them photograph them and post them? What is so special about them? I find them all the time when field hunting and I just pitch them.........am I missing something? 

Maybe it's the first time they've found a square nail and think they are a fantastic find. I pitch mine too.

I find a lot of those up here.  Some of them are still in the buildings, though.  I keep a few from time to time.  Mainly to me, they're an indicator of the age of the site I'm searching.  Course, they are a relic and a piece of history, so if somebody finds them I'm happy for them.

I think there is a local hardware store here that still sells them in bulk.

Square nails were used in the eighteen hundreds and miners also used them to mark their claim by nailing then in a tree in a particular pattern.

So many nails in a set design pattern and registered with the local authorities in charge of that mining district at the time.

HI, They are still manufactured. for easily split wood they are superior.

Don Jose de la Mancha

[John 3:16]

If people are saving the relics and other finds from a site, and keeping them together with notes and with a view toward preserving the history of the site (which they ought to be doing), then it makes sense to keep at least a couple of the nails found from the site. 

Just because square nails can still be purchased, that doesn't mean anything.  It's like saying banks still have rolls of shiny new  pennies.  Too, you can still go buy seated dimes at a coin show;  so what? 

The evolution of square nail types follows a historical progression and can help date a site.   

In the photo below, one of the square nails is particularly early.  It would be plain foolish not to save such a one (or preferably all of them) if it were found at a site.  Since most people are in this hobby for the history (...), the lack of monetary value of square nails is not an issue, I presume.

   

I believe the lack of rust on dug examples of the earliest nails is a function of the high quality iron ore used, as well as the laborious forging techniques which tended to purge impurities.  The somewhat later nails are invariably caked with rust, and badly. 

I do not save the badly-rusted examples of later 19th Century nails unless these are the earliest ones at a site, and the best specimens available. 

Happy hunting,
Rusted

If people are saving the relics and other finds from a site, and keeping them together with notes and with a view toward preserving the history of the site (which they ought to be doing), then it makes sense to keep at least a couple of the nails found from the site. 

Just because square nails can still be purchased, that doesn't mean anything.  It's like saying banks still have rolls of shiny new  pennies.  Too, you can still go buy seated dimes at a coin show;  so what? 

The evolution of square nail types follows a historical progression and can help date a site.   

In the photo below, one of the square nails is particularly early.  It would be plain foolish not to save such a one (or preferably all of them) if it were found at a site.  Since most people are in this hobby for the history (...), the lack of monetary value of square nails is not an issue, I presume.

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I believe the lack of rust on dug examples of the earliest nails is a function of the high quality iron ore used, as well as the laborious forging techniques which tended to purge impurities.  The somewhat later nails are invariably caked with rust, and badly. 

I do not save the badly-rusted examples of later 19th Century nails unless these are the earliest ones at a site, and the best specimens available. 

Happy hunting,
Rusted


Well said rusted iron. All nails are not the same. There are the common square cut nails, and then there are the more historic hand forged ones. Henry Chapman Mercer who lived at the turn of the century was the pioneer of early American rural history, and he wrote an entire volume on square nails of Pennsylvania. He removed nails from existing dateable structures going back to the 1600's  and was able to identify the evolution of styles, the dates,  and as well, was able to identify some nails by location. These variations can be a great tool to a detectorist when there's little remaining to date a cellar hole or other similar site. The oldest ones  were often so valuable to our early settlers that remains of timbers were often burned just to salvage the existig nails from the ashes.

Square nails help to locate old homesteads out in the woods too.

Just curious why I see so many posts where people who find square nails clean them photograph them and post them? What is so special about them? I find them all the time when field hunting and I just pitch them.........am I missing something? 

Some people will even have an orgasm posting an undistinguished rusted relic and expect immediate identification as if you have x-ray vision...

Then there are those who really arn't impressed with much of the mystery crud we find...some may be anomolies...

The nails, many times though, are historic markers...which identify a potential site...

Although, if you happen to be hunting in tornado country, the nails you find may be a fragment of a roof that has been transported and dropped...

i don't keep them anymore. years ago i had a big box of them and just left them when we moved. today i like those hand made bronze nails/spikes like they find at shipwrecks.
teddy

[John 3:16]

Well said rusted iron. All nails are not the same.

Thanks johnnyi. 

I was hoping I didn't come across as too smarmy.  I really didn't mean to do that and hope nobody took it that way.  I love you all.

today i like those hand made bronze nails/spikes like they find at shipwrecks.
teddy

Those are great when you can find them.   I think I remember finding one or two on land, as well.   

Don't take me wrong, I was just wondering..........inquiring minds want to know =)

Hi all
Most of the square nails I find are copper and were hand made by the local blacksmith
and are part of our social history, I like to see them coming up.
                Dave.

it harkens back to the says when everything was "hand made"--those nails of old were hand made by a skilled blacksmiths -- not machine made trash like todays nails are -- skilled blacksmiths nails often have little to no rust on them --later era cut nails cut from a sheet of iron / steel are a bit differant than the early ones are. 

Finding handmade nails has always been a source of pleasure for me, being a woodworker.
When I find an antique that has been trashed beyond repair ...
I have been a salvager of pieces and parts "just in case",
I have managed to save a few of these things that have a significance to me.
some of my hand forged nails never got rusted and are so small that it amazes me they were made at all. I have some bronze nails that are just over an inch long,
they were used to make a stripper type canoe that before it was dismantled was over twenty feet long. They used bronze because they wouldn't rust or deteriorate.
The source of the work is unknown, but amazing never the less.

Square nails, ca. 1860, still in use and still holdin the buildin together.  Very little rust, if any, evident after 150 years.

No your not missing anything. It's kind of like the guy who would rather collect coins than dig civil war memorabilia.  Te each his own.. But, I must admit I'm a sucker for the nails for some reason too  HHHH

If you will notice, they did NOT split the wood as our modern pointed ones do.

Don Jose de La Mancha

I'll have to admit after 40 years I keep the nice ones too. I've got buckets of stuff like that in my barn. Not really worth anything but to good to throw away.

Hand-forged nails were the first manufactured nails, and they date back to Biblical times.  As people first used hewn beams, timbers, planks, and whole logs to build with, the early hand-made nails were spikes.  With the development of the split wood shingle, nails of about 1" long came into use.  When sawyers, and then sawmills, began cutting dimension lumber, the sizes and varieties of nails greatly expanded.  Thus, over time, nails developed in different sizes, shapes, and used different heads to fasten lumber and wood.

Nails have always been in demand.  Some blacksmiths made only nails and they were called "Nailers."  Nails were so scarce (and expensive) in pre-1850 America that people would burn dilapidated buildings just to sift the ashes for nails.   They did so because pulling the nails would have damaged most of them.  After the nails were recovered, a blacksmith could easily straighten any nails that had been bent during construction.

We still use the term "penny" when referring to a nail's size.  It is believed that this term came into use in the early 1600's in England.  The English monetary unit was the Pound Sterling (£) which was divided into Shillings and Pence.  The cost of 100 nails in Pence in the 1600's is how we refer to nail sizes to this day.  For example, 100 small nails that sold for 4 pence were called 4d nails (4 d is the abbreviation of 4 pence).  100 larger nails that sold for 16 pence are 16d nails.  And so on.

The cut nail made its appearance in the mid-1700's.  For example, Thomas Jefferson established a nail factory at his Monticello plantation as a way to increase his farm income.  His nail factory made both hand-forged and cut nails.  It would not be until the middle-1800's that cut nails began dominating the marketplace.  Cut nails are not actually "cut"--they are sheared from steel plate that is the thickness of the nail shank.  Although routinely referred to as "square nails", the cutting machine tapers the nail shank as it is sheared from the steel plate.  A second machine forms the head of a cut nail.  With the hand-forged nail, all four sides are tapered.  With the cut nail, two sides are parallel because they represent the thickness of the plate they were sheared from.

Cut nails could be manufactured much faster than hand-forged nails.  As the process was mechanized, the cost per nail was less.  However, cut nail factories employed operators and attendants for each machine so the process was still labor-intensive.  The noise in those mills was deafening as well.  Cut nails had their heyday from about 1820 (development of the Type B nail) to 1910, the advent of the wire nail.

GG~

References:

Nail manufacturing at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello  http://www.monticello.org/plantation/work/nailmaking.html

Nail Industry at "Nail City"--Wheeling, WV  http://wheeling.weirton.lib.wv.us/history/bus/nails.htm

Glasgow Steel Nail Ltd.  www.glasgowsteelnail.com

By Dave Allen, Editor, Appalachian Blacksmiths Assn.

[John 3:16]

Some great responses in this thread.  It's true, the square nail tends to crush its way down through the wood instead of splitting it. 

A lot of people don't know that about cut nails being invented in the 1700's.

Hand forged nails are often, but not always, relatively free of rust even when dug.  Some of them are still quite rusty, especially if the refined iron had impurities. 

If you guys have any pics of your dug nails that you like, let's see 'em.  I likes iron relics.   

these old hand cut nails are antiques and sold at the antique stores. dont through them away!