Ever since mankind learned that melting iron ore produced metal, ideas on what could be done with it must have followed very quickly. Making nails from it to join pieces of wood together began a creative process, an early form of engineering if you like that, like Topsy, just grew and grew.
In the UK evidence of nail making has been found from Roman times. These early nails were hand made from wrought iron by blacksmiths working the hot iron into square bars on an anvil by hammering the sides into shape, tapering one end and using a nail header to form the head at the other.
We know that this type nail shape was still in use in the early 1500’s because a barrel of them was found on board the “Mary Rose” the flagship of King Henry the Eighth when she was excavated from the mud in the 1980’s.
The Internationally famous English rugby club Orrell RUFC who now play as the Orrell Anvils, have one quarter of their club badge showing an anvil with sparks coming from it reflecting the villages previous involvement with blacksmiths and nail making. In the Norton area of Sheffield one of the City’s earliest public houses, The Nail Makers Arms is to be found.
By the 1600’s “Slitting Mills” started to appear and the process of nail making became more industrialised and cut nails replaced the handmade ones.
During then 18th century, parts of the UK, like for example the Black Country in the West Midlands became important centres for engineering, chain and nail production. Their easy access to coal which powered the areas blast furnaces which in turn produced the iron that became the nails etc coupled with the canals and waterways which were used to transport goods to the ports made the Midlands a major centre for iron and steel production. Huge quantities of cut nails were exported to the colonies; America in particular was a very big market as so many houses there were built of timber. It was very hard work with families working in nail shops, roughly 12ft by 15ft with little ventilation apart from the door and a couple of unglazed windows. Imagine the noise!
The nail shops had a central hearth therefore allowing a family of six or seven who worked together to produce the nails to share a common source of heat and saved on fuel costs. The other advantage was that it enabled the forging etc to be carried out around the walls of the building and around the fire. Typically the “Nailer” would work three or four rods using the fire and gauging when the correct temperature and then start forging the rods into nails, the sharp end was were the rods would cut off to the required length before being placed into a countersunk bore where a few blows later the head of the nail would be formed and the now finished nail being released by a spring known locally as a “Whimsey”.
When larger nails or spikes were required a spring tilt hammer called an “Oliver” would be used. It was operated by foot pressure being applied to a treadle which in turn worked a crank. Once the hammer had delivered its blow it was bought back to the vertical by a spring pole fixed to the beams of the nail shop. The weight of the hammer varied from just a few pounds to 30 pounds. When thick iron was being cut it could take as many as three people to operate the Oliver by taking turns to work the treadle. In addition to working this machine family members would be employed using hand hammers, sharpening tools, stoking the fire and operating the bellows.
By the 1900’s however coils of steel wire were being produced along with machines that could use the wire as feed stock and given the automated nature of the production, wire nails could be produced far cheaper than their man-made cut iron nail counterparts. The cheaper mass produced wire nails soon became the mainstay product in ironmongers and building suppliers stocks.
The traditional hand wrought iron nails can and are still be produced but because of the time taken to produce them they are very expensive and mostly find their way into restoration projects where the nail is on show, for instance as part of a castle door.
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