Old Square Nails :: Yes, Virginia, They Really Do Still Make Them
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Most of us are familiar with the old square nails used centuries ago. We’ve seen them on display at museum homes, or historical society exhibits, or perhaps being hammered out by blacksmiths in places like Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg.
What many of us are unaware of, however, is that those old nails were actually superior in design to modern wire nails. They have several times the holding power, and are less likely to cause wood to split. And perhaps even less well known is the fact that square nails are still manufactured today. They are even available in bulk quantities.
Top: Hand forged 17th century iron nails and spike in the roof system of the Old Hawkins house, Derby, Connecticut. Bottom: Two 2.5″ (8d) square-cut iron nails I extracted from a door jamb, causing an oyster shell to break free from surrounding plaster (oyster shells were used as thickeners in early plaster walls).
Old Square Nails are Old
Hand-forged iron nails predate the ancient Romans. The basic form of the modern wrought square nail was developed in sixteenth century Europe. When the first settlers began arriving in the New World in the early seventeenth century, they brought large quantities of wrought nails with them. Nail making was never done on a very large scale in the American colonies. Nails primarily imported from England, right up until the Revolution.
Around the 1790’s, American inventors had prototyped the first nail making machines. These produced square-cut nails by cutting them from iron rods. By the early 1820’s, nail-making machines had become so efficient that America soon became the world’s leading manufacturer and exporter of nails.
Modern square-cut steel nails by Tremont Nail Company. From left to right: 4″ (20d) cut-spike (HDG), 3.5″ (16d) cut-spike (HDG), 3.5″ common, 2.5″ (8d) fireboard clinch (HDG), 2″ (6d) rosehead common, 2″ wrought nail, 1.5″ (4d) wrought nail, 1″ (2d) wrought nail, 1″ brad, and 1″ headless brad (for fine finishing) (HDG=hot dip galvanized)
Square Cut Nails are Superior
Square-cut nails are fundamentally superior to modern wire nails because of their superior holding power. If you’ve ever attempted to extract a square-cut nail from a board, you know what I’m talking about. They hold so tenaciously that you’ll often break the board or the nail itself before removing it. The reason for this is the shape of the shank. It usually tapers on two opposite sides from head to tip, resulting in a chisel-shaped point. The four edges of the shank also tend to be very sharp.
When driven with the correct orientation (non-tapered sides parallel to the grain), the tip and edges shear the wood fibers rather than push them apart as wire nails do. Then, the shank finally wedges itself tightly into the wood. Because of their shearing ability, square-cut nails tend not to split wood. They can be used closer to the edge or end of a board than a wire nail.
A 3.5″ (16 penny, or 16d) square-cut bright common nail and it’s equivalent wire nail cousin. This 16d square-cut common nail costs about 17 cents. The wire nail goes for about 7 cents, based on the Tremont catalog and my local Home Depot, respectively. The square nail is about 2.4 times as expensive as the wire nail. But they have about 4 times the holding power. Interestingly enough, in terms of the old penny weight costing system, either nail would’ve cost about 0.2 cents a piece back in the old days. Albeit in Colonial pennies, not modern U.S. pennies.
Modern Nails Squeeze In
Modern wire nails were invented in the late nineteenth century. Improved industrial processes simplified the formation of round wire rods from soft steel. Nailing machines then retooled to cut nails from less expensive round wire. The cheaper, mass produced cut-wire nail met with instant market success during America’s westward expansion, and it forced the manufacturing of square-cut iron nails into eclipse.
Today, wrought square nails are still used in historical restoration projects. Obtained directly from blacksmiths or ordered through vintage hardware suppliers. Also, many of the larger living history museums, such as Colonial Willamsburg, maintain their own blacksmith shops that supply their sites with historically accurate, forged nails.
Simple wood floor mock-up I created using 2x4s and oak scants of different widths. I’ll often build simple prototypes like this to experiment with different combinations of wood species, stain, and nail types. In this particular one, I am comparing common rosehead nails (first three boards, left to right) and wrought nails (fourth and fifth boards on the right). (I have yet to apply any stain to these boards). I’m not sure I like the look of the roseheads when face nailed. I think they would look better counter sunk. We’ll try that next…
Square Cut Nails are Still Available
Square-cut nails, on the other hand, are still available from the Tremont Nail Company, of Mansfield, Massachusetts. Tremont, which today is a division of Acorn Manufacturing. (You might remember them from our post on Wood Window Shutters.) The company was founded in 1819 in response to the Federal Period demand for low-cost nail production. It is the only remaining American nail company producing square-cut nails. Today, Tremont makes square-cut nails out of steel, rather than iron. Their common nails made from hardened, high-carbon steel.
Editor’s Note: Bob Vila toured Tremont Nail back in 2011.
They even offer hot-dipped galvanized versions for outdoor applications. But the truly amazing thing about Tremont is that they still use their own vintage nail-cutting machines. These date back to the 1850s. Over the years, they’ve managed to keep these machines running by fabricating replacement parts when necessary. So these reproduction nails are hardly reproductions at all. Harder and stronger than iron, they are more of a generational advancement in square-cut nail technology, rather than simple copies of historic artifacts.
The wrought nails look much better for face nailing in oak, in my opinion. We’ll have to see how they look with different stains and a polyurethane overcoat.
So, the next time you’re touring an historic home or colonial settlement museum, keep in mind the old adage that a wooden structure is only as strong as its fasteners. And you may more fully understand just why some of these old buildings are still standing. The construction techniques of our forebears were not necessarily inferior to our own. Some were actually better, only succumbing in the end to that ages-old practice of trading utility off in favor of reducing costs.
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Note from the hosts: Thanks for visiting. The perfect blend here – we’re Old House fanatics that love to geek on both Building History and Building Science. We welcome you to stick and click. Cheers. ~jb
Great post, John! Makes me want to arrange a tour of Tremont Nails…it would be fascinating, I’m sure.
Also, you’ve given me a great perspective on my own remodel.
Thanks!
Fascinating post, John.
It is always interesting to see how importance and perception change when illuminating a dark corner with fresh, bright, light.
Conditioned to buy modern wire nails, I assumed they were not only more available and less expensive, but better at improving grip. Your description brings clarity to the question and the stroll through history was fun.
For face nailing restoration projects the wrought nails get my vote too! Great look!
Thanks,
Mike
Amy: Thanks for commenting. Interesting that you mentioned touring Tremont. Until just recently, they were situated in the same building they had been in since they were founded, an old mill building in Wareham, Mass. Tours had been discontinued out of safety concerns. But since they’ve relocated to Acorn’s main facility, tours might be possible again. I’ll inquire with them about that. And glad if I’ve helped with your remodel!
Mike: Thanks very much for your very thoughtful comment (as always). The rationale regarding wire nails is that, since cheaper and more readily available in large quantities, you use more of them, following specific nailing patterns. And I suppose it’s fair to say that was the whole motivation for stick framing construction, in general, and why we (as a society) went in that direction.
It’s also interesting to me how a superior past technology gets squeezed out of the picture by ancillary concerns. For example, you’re not going to find any Simpson StrongTie gussets that are drilled for square nails. And there are no square nails guns. And what would my local building inspector say about using them in a serious structural application? Probably “no” because he doesn’t understand them. There are many examples of things used in the past that are still stronger and superior to what we use today, but not compliant with modern codes, just because they fell out of convention.
But glad you enjoyed the post!
~John
Actually, I realize now that I neglected to mention that square nails are still in use today as concrete flooring nails, for securing wood flooring to concrete. But that is the only modern application of square nails that I am aware of.
OK, enough said…Probably more about square nails than you wanted to know! Whew! :-)
Great story!
I wonder what my customers would think if I went back to nails to install cabinets like the old days!
These square babies would hold great!
Hi James! Thanks for the comment. Hey, you could always try a few prototypes and see what your customers think about it. I suppose it depends on what sort of look they are going for. If I ever get around to finally building some new cabinets for my kitchen, I am definitely going to attempt some joinery based on square-cut nails, and see what sort of results I get.
If I were installing a knotty alder kitchen that had some glass display cabinets it would be real tempting to use them in the open areas to add an ‘old world’ feel to the look.
James, I would love see something like that. If you give in to such a temptation, hope you’ll post it so we can see the results!
An interesting follow-up would be a comparison of the strength of modern nail-gun nails.
Hi Juliana!
I think that’s an excellent suggestion. As a background process, I’ll start do some research on the testing & measurement aspect of such a comparison and let you know what I come up with
~John
Hi John,
I enjoyed this well prepared piece and it helped me to understand something about my own house. It is a brace framed 20′ x 24′ building that was built in 1883. When I got to it in 1989 the front of the building sagged one way and the back the other. I removed the clapboard siding and added plywood on the outside of the oak studs to cut down on air infiltration and frankly because I did not know any better. The oak wood was too hard for ordinary wire nails so I used cut nails to attach the ply. Since then my house has not moved one bit. It is a crooked house locked in place by all of those square nails.
Some time ago I came across a nail I was told was called a barge nail. It is more of a spike, being about six inches long with a squarish tapered body. The thickest part of the nail is near the head but just below the head the nail tapers sharply in and then the head grows back out of this taper like a mushroom. The person who showed me this nail said they were used in barges and that wet wood would actually close in around the nails smaller neck to give it more holding power. Have you ever seen or heard of these?
Thanks again, I really enjoyed it.
-b
Hi Barry,
Thanks very much for your detailed and thoughtful comment. It really meant a lot to me.
I love the story of your 1883 house. It reminds me quite a bit of some of my experiences with my own. My house was built in the 1670s and is a scribe-ruled timber frame, made mostly from oak, and incredibly overbuilt. The sheathing consists of vertically hung 2 x 18 planks of solid oak, very similar to the vertical planks you might see in an old barn. The planks are fastened to the major framing members using square nails, of course, but exactly of what size, style, etc., I have yet to determine. The exterior clapboards are in turn directly nailed to the planks.
There are also two transverse walls on either side of the chimney column, basically dividing the house into front and back sections on both the 1st and 2nd floors. They are of the same construction (wide, vertical planks).
All this sheathing makes the house incredibly strong and stable. There is no wind bracing, for example, anywhere in the frame, because the builders relied on the heavy sheathing to stiffen the frame, and felt that braces were unnecessary.
Back in the 1950s, the original foundation, which apparently was in severe disrepair, was replaced with a modern cement block foundation. In the process of placing the house on the new foundation, the frame somehow got slightly twisted, and my house, like your own, sags slightly to one side. However, by all accounts, it never moved since then. I owe that fact to the heavy sheathing nailed to the frame, and the transverse walls.
The previous owner, who grew up there, told me that on more than one occasion, while doing some carpentry on the house, he likewise attempted to drive wire nails into either the framing or sheathing, and the oak was just too hard to accept the nails.
Regarding the barge nail, I have not heard that term before, but I am familiar with the term “boat nail”, which sounds like exactly the same thing. In fact, they are available from the Tremont catalog, and are listed as up to 6″ in length.
The shape just as you describe it (shank wider in the middle than at the ends) is common in many styles of nails. If you zoom-in on the photo of the set of nails in my posting, you can see that the three black wrought nails all have that shape. In my house, I’ve also recovered many small iron lath nails of similar shape.
Thanks again for the great comments, Barry!
~ John
Hi John, Those nails are actually better than the ones that r being used today. As u said they r not easily bent and they secure yr flooring to the concrete very easily. If i have my own home and doing any renovation, that would be the best to used. I had seen them in house i had remodel befor,so people who knows about them still uses them.
Hey Rodney, Thanks for visiting, and thanks for the comment! I am glad to hear that your own remodeling experiences validate my conclusions. Maybe what we need to do is try to initiate a square nail revival and bring them back into the main stream, if possible! Hope to see you soon…
Hello John, Found this post through James Dibbens pod cast. Really enjoyed the article. My father was a block mason and business owner for 50 yrs here in Florida, he just passed away Feb 21st 2011. One of the things I remember vividly is his use of cut nails as he would say “because they hold like a SOB” and they certainly do. He used them for most anything during the block portion of a job but the #1 use was to hold the patches in place while the concrete was was being pumped to fill the columns or walls. Since the cut nails gripped so well there were fewer blow outs. Also, I will try to get you a photo of the cross at our old chuch it was created out of 4 inch cut nails spot welded together a beautiful piece of art. Thanks for the chance to talk about my Dads memory. Larry Dalton
Larry,
I am very sorry for your recent loss of your father. But thanks very much for sharing his story and elaborating on his use of cut nails in his work. I know little of masonry but am aware that cut nails have great application there, so your comment adds yet another dimension to my article, and I greatly appreciate that.
If you manage to get a photo of the cross, please post another comment here with a link. Would very much like to see it.
– John
Hi John,
I live in Leadville, CO and am having our late 1800s home resided. There is a stamp mark on some of the original shingles bearing a letter “A” with two stars on either side, and the words “FROM JOHN POOLE PORTLAND” underneath. The letters “M.& R.” are also visible. I could post a picture . . . any relation to you? Could you tell me anything about it? Thank you!
Hi Laurel!
That’s quite a find! No relation of mine (at least, not that I’m aware of). But I really appreciate your telling me about it.
In the past, builders often affixed their names to their work products. I’ve heard many stories of bricks, shingles, cabinetry, and other items often carrying the names or initials of the people who put them there.
Even heard an account not too long ago of some old wall paper being removed, where it was discovered that the guys who hanged the wallpaper had signed their names on the wall before starting their work. This is a practice rarely done today, except sometimes in the case of things like custom cabinetry or furniture.
Anyway, I’d be very happy to see a photo. Perhaps you could post one on your blog? I perused your blog, by the way, and liked it very much! Feel free to comment back here with a link, if you decide to do this.
Thanks again,
– John
Hi John,
I have heard that square nails are much better than wire nails for outside decks. Many of my round nails are popping out and I need to pound them back, a job that will take me hours. I would like to replace them with cut nails so that I don’t have to do this often. What type and size of square nail is appropriate for this job?
Thanks so much.
Carol
Hi Carol!
While I agree with the argument, I have no experience in using square nails for fastening exposed, exterior structures like decks, so have no recommendations for you.
I’d suggest checking with your local building department, first, to see if square nails are an acceptable substitute for replacing old wire decking nails, in your particular municipality or state.
Then, maybe ask a few contractors in your area who do deck construction if they’ve heard of doing this, and if so, would they be willing to recommend a particular type of square nail and size.
An easier, and probably far less expensive, option for you might be to just substitute appropriately sized deck screws for loosening wire nails, quite frankly.
Good luck, and let us know what you finally come up with!
~ John
I came across your article while looking for a supplier for these nails in the Dominican Republic. After reading several of the comments, a came across one that talks about modern uses so I felt the need to update that comment.
A recent modern use for these nails is actually helping to preserve the Dominican Republics greatest asset – Tourism.
Approximately, 60% of the tourism in this country, is dependent on the white sandy beaches and climate. I work for a not-for profit institution and we are using these nails to help restore coral reefs. We hammer them onto the local reefs and attach coral fragments grown in our coral nursery. the corals eventually grow over the nails and cement themselves to the degraded reef. this is helping preserve one of the most important reef building corals also considered Endangered. We use the hot-dipped galvanized nails. I encurage you to visit our site (under environmental programs) to see these nails in use.
If you guys know how I can get a hold of some from local suppliers or how to best get them here I would appreciate it.
Hi Victor,
Thanks very much for your comment. Wow, this obviously is a critical application of square cut nails that I never would’ve thought was even going on. Thanks very much for informing us about this, and referring us to your site.
I’m not aware of any suppliers of HDG square nails in your area, nor anywhere else outside the U.S., for that matter. The only thing I can suggest is that you contact Tremont Nail directly (their phone number is right at the bottom of their home page), inform them of whom you are and what you are doing, and ask if they’d consider some significant discounts for large bulk orders (I’m sure you need a lot of nails), and if they can legally ship stuff directly to your area.
On the other hand, if there happens to be some distributor in your area that’s more convenient for you to deal with, I can’t imagine Tremont not knowing who that might be, since they are pretty much the exclusive manufacturer of HDG traditional square nails in the world.
Let us know how things work out. If not, I’ll investigate further to see if there’s any other possible distribution channel for you, but right now, I think going directly to the manufacturer is your best bet.
~John
P.S. I just noticed that Tremont is shut down for summer vacation until July 9th. So you will most likely have to contact them after the 9th. But good luck!
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Very good info. Lucky me I found your site by accident (stumbleupon). I have book-marked it for later!
cheers! ~jb
I have some old square nails what are they worth?
NEW Question. I bought a shed from Home Depot. I want to class it up by installing clapboard on the exterior. Can I just nail clapboard over the exterior that came with the shed? Do I need some kind of barrier cloth(?) or such between them?
Thank you
Rita if this is still a question for you, feel free to email me @ [email protected]. Thanks. ~jb
See this for a small tour… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kQsyf6rj60
Russ this is fantastic –
Thank you for sharing!
Bob Vila touring Tremont Nail.
Our house was supposedly built in 1909 but I think earlier. On top of the limestone foundation are 8 by 8s mortice and tendon at corners with pegs through that. Then the studs are set in square pockets (half the stud inserted into a half stud hole). The rest is balloon framed with ship lap siding/sheathing. Joists notched into the 8 by 8s. On second floor they are set on a ribbon board that’s nailed to the studs. On the gables when a stud ended they crippled on another and whammed then together with 20d cut nails. All they used on the entire house (trim included) were 8d and 20 d nails and like 4d on the lath inside.
In the living room there were two studs that were adjed (sic) together in place after being framed. Adje marks everywhere in structure. The entire house in built of oak, including the roof sheathing.
So when did builders in Iowa quit using cut nails as casing nails in trim?
I don’t know that answer Dave. We had cut nails esp. in exterior trim in 1890’s farmhouse, here in MD. Honestly, I don’t believe I’ve spotted them on our houses built 1920 or after. Though admittedly, I really hadn’t been set on looking. Cheers and thanks for sharing the details of a great old house. ~jb, editor – BuildingMoxie.com