The Price of Nails Since 1695: A Window into Economic Change

I'm pretty sure the product has changed a lot, too. Iron "cut nails" used to be what a nail was; they're still available but we use a mild steel drawn wire thing now thats much softer and has a sharper point.

We build with much softer wood than we used to, as well. and in smaller dimensions with different methods. Today's nail is a permanent fastener that bears load; used to be they were more of a "finish tack" and the joinery was done with pegs and tenons and glues and craft rather than the cehap, easy techniques we like now.

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rwcGXIORro

> To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

https://www.statista.com/chart/10567/the-cost-of-light-throu...

For reasons such as the house being old and decrepit, moving locations & rebuilding, financial reasons, etc.

At the time I wondered if the heat would have an effect on the nails, but I think the answer is mostly no, it wouldn’t.

Holding bits of wood together is a weirdly interesting area of tech.

Got treated to yet another generalized opinion from an arm-chair economist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G9h-vCmE2U

For attaching pressure treated wood to the concrete footings when building pony walls.