The Price of Nails Since 1695
nber.org
nber.org
This is probably more true for nails than many other things. It also has problems when looking at the details with (older style) cut nails working better than wire nails in some applications but being more expensive. The article discusses these but I would have liked it if the article had tracked the price of cut nails to the present too.
Another amusing nail thing is that, despite the fluctuating price, nail sizes in the US are still typically given in pence (ie corresponding to the cost of the nails at some time in history) where eg a 4d nail is about 50% larger than a 2d nail in length and diameter.
While 'somewhat' true, its also untrue.
Modern nails are different from the nails in the 60's.
Modern nails are rounded. Many of the 1960s nails are square with sharp edges, a completely different manufacturing technique. I imagine that these were either forged in shape or cut from square stock and mashed to a sharper point.
The 1960's nails also have a square head and were made of a weaker iron, but because of their square edges they 'cut' their way into the wood and didn't need to be as strong as rounded 'modern' nails.
Modern rounded nails are cut from a wire and a point is 'cut' into the edge and a head is crushed from the top of the wire.
Anyways.. things change, and i imagine they changed before the 1960's square nails too, I just don't know about them.
The variation of types is noted in the paper; for example:
> How best to account for identifiable differences in holding power, shipping costs, and any other relevant characteristics of different types of nails? One modern approach is to construct a so-called hedonic price index that would use statistical techniques to explicitly account for all relevant characteristics of nails and for how the marketplace valued those characteristics. Data limitations make that impossible in this case. Thus, I use another common technique, a matched- model procedure. This methodology links the cents-per-nail prices in Figure 3 across the switchover points from one type of nail to another; this linking will accurately adjust for quality change to the extent that the rice/performance ratio for nails was equalized by the market in periods when multiple types of nails were available. This approach is a sensible and widely used methodology to construct a consistent price index that adjusts for changes in quality over time so that like can be compared to like given available data. Specifically, I start with the prices for the most recent period (the black segment for wire nails), and then link backwards. In each of the crossover years (1890, 1814, and 1784), I use the price from the more recent type of nail and link and extend backwards from that year using percent changes in prices for the earlier type of nails in the earlier years.
Different types of nails is also brought up in an interview with the author on the Odd Lots podcast (Feb 7):
* https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/this-is-what-happene...
Additionally, the fibers cut by the traditional nails form a natural wedge, making those nails far harder to pull out.
You can improve the performance of a wire nail by simply blunting the tip with a hammer.
For more info, here's are two videos about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rwcGXIORro
EDIT: Aha, no, apparently not, because the alignment of the tapered sides on the cut nail is what makes the wedging effect work (from the first video link posted by parent).
http://web.archive.org/web/20210612014407/https://www.tremon...
Sometimes good enough and 10x cheaper is the right call.
If you're using engineered or dimensional lumber from 15 year pine, getting 75 years out of the home without major structural upgrades is going to be a rarity so you might as well use wire nails. Most of those nails would outlast the home anyway.
Blacksmith forged nails are still available (if you know a blacksmith, not at your local hardware store). They're likewise a specialty item.
Incidentally, the surname Naylor was once an occupational surname for a person who made nails.
[0] AIUI, masonry nails are more likely to be cut nails, but they're hardened, so they aren't really interchangeable for woodworking.
Reminds me of the Primus song. "Seen 'em down in SoCo pounding sixteen-penny nails."
- After a long period of getting cheaper in real terms, nails have started to get more expensive (you get less nail for your money in 2022 than you did in 1992).
- The main driver of this cost increase is more expensive labor and services, essentially human time is becoming more expensive to purchase.
- This rise is cost is unlikely to be felt by the average consumer because we have both on an individual level and as a nation have gotten wealthier so that increased cost is coming out of a larger pool of money.
Is that a fair summary of the current state of things?
This is interesting, because I’d assume that the labor part of the total cost to produce a nail has fallen to practically zero nowadays. I would assume that capital (machines and factory buildings) and raw material (steel) would comprise practically the entire cost of producing a nail nowadays.
It would probably be more useful to have run a similar study against Europe during this period. While the formation of nation states and the industrial revolution would be substantial socio-economic activities, the relative change was less.
There were a number of very disruptive wars in Europe during the last three centuries, not to mention emergence and disappearance of whole nations, whether defined by language or state borders or armies. The numerous famines and genocides had a very real socio-economic impact.
Socialist and communist governments in the last hundred years with their market planning ideology in something like half of Europe would also throw a wrench in natural price formation. This is not the only socio-economic challenge: the diversity of languages, currencies and forms of government would not help make sweeping studies like this accurate.
The colonizers of the US were largely immigrants from Europe, who were fleeing war, oppression, famine or other calamity. There has never been any comparable immigration from the US to Europe (or indeed to anywhere). To me this indicates very strongly which region has been stable or not.
In comparison, the very disruptive geographic phase that you refer to seems very stable growth to me. I'm a bit puzzled how the relative change has been less in Europe, in my view it's quite the opposite!
For example, in 1900s Soviet Union alone forcefully displaced more than 20 million people. In the 1700s and 1800s Europe saw several wars, which claimed millions of casualties each and were largely fought in areas where people in peaceful times would be producing and consuming nails. I think the US westward expansion and conflicts (with the exception of the Civil War) happened largely in the new areas and possibly had relatively little effect on the more established regions in the East.
I could go on with more examples, but that would not increase my understanding. How could I better understand the instability in the US?
As a hopefully illuminating example on the other side, some of the European instability is implicitly captured by the Wikipedia list of conflicts[1], keeping in mind that casualties are hundreds of thousands or even over a million deaths in many cases even though not listed. Are there similar (or more in-depth) resources that would indicate my ignorance and help me learn more about how the US expansion, conflicts and migration caused instability?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#18...
In terms of wars and moving away, US had a lot of action going on. US history is actually interesting.
* 1695 - 1865 is period of slavery and thus massive forced movement of huge amounts of people. Especially by the last decades, there was a lot of movement of slaves within united states. By a lot, I mean really huge amounts due to business moving.
* The whole native-american population was displaced or killed from majority of the continent in that span. Those areas did not magically appeared out of nowhere empty.
* The war between north and south was actually major conflict. The leadup to it was bloody. The aftermath of it completely transformed economy and culture in the South.
* South consequently went through short but real period of democratization and then closing up the politics to groups.
* Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern by the beginning of 20 century.
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And before you say they did not produced nails, neither did peasants in Soviet Union all that much. That region was hugely rural, hugely behind the times in terms of industry or literacy.
I completely agree that the Civil War was a major conflict with a lot casualties and it redefined the society. But around the same time, there were four equally bloody and society defining wars in Europe (one of them resulting in the genocide of more than a million Circassian people, two others to the birth of the German nation state), and many more before and after those.
As a matter of fact, Europe continues to suffer from a lot of instability, it seems like another war may break out between Russia and Ukraine any day now. I'd much prefer people made and used nails instead of raised conflicts.
American history is not just civil war. Texas was annexed 1845 from Mexico and Mexican-American War was 1846-1848. Pretty close to civil war.
> (one of them resulting in the genocide of more than a million Circassian people, two others to the birth of the German nation state), and many more before and after those.
Indian removal (trail of tears) was around the time of civil war. The expanse was not nearly finished in the run up to it. In fact, expanse was what made it blew in a way, because of the "will the new states be slave states or free states" question. Lincoln himself signed laws that gave away a lot of tribal land. The genocidal acts happened after civil war.
Also, when civil war ended, African Americans did engaged in politics and had real successes. In some states they were huge amount of population, over half sometimes. Which led to terrorist campaigns against those active in politics ultimately in loss of civil rights. That is not stability either. This was huge and long inner conflict.
American history is different. But there was a lot going on since 1695. Is was a lot more then just civil war. Just like Russian history is a lot more then Communism, despite pretty much everyone ignoring run up to it.
Well... not quite...
> Up to fourteen young male slaves, aged ten to twenty-one, worked at the forges of the nailery. From 1794 to 1796, while he was in temporary retirement at Monticello, Jefferson calculated the efficiency of the nailers, each day weighing their nail rod and the nails they produced.
(Source: https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/nai...)
Though it would seem the idea was to then sell the nails for extra income (TJ was always strapped for cash), so it's kind of an ugly stop on the way to "what if you could just go buy a bag of nails?"
And this impeded trade, manufacture and automation.
But you got me with this topic by 'someone on the internet saying', Natural price formation is the only socio-economic challenge? (-;
regards
It was also pretty common to recycle them when taking something apart, not to remelt them but simply to re-use them after straightening.
When I was kid, my grandfather (born early 1920s in the southern US, so grew up in the Great Depression) had a coffee can in his shop where he'd put pulled nails, that I would get to hammer back straight. Good hammering practice!
[1]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/40503/were-iron...
https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
Demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPdviIiNAM8
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29617/w296...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/this-is-w...
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072557499/what-nails-can-tel...
* https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/this-is-what-happene...
They've done a done quite a few on the supply chain: two on lumber, shipping containers, shipping pallets, separate ones on TSMC and ASML (and RISC-V), ports, marine transport/shipping, rail, trucking.
The Price of Nails Since 1695: A Window into Economic Change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838157 - Jan 2022 (26 comments)
some nails, a hammer, a saw, a piece of string, a bubble level, and measurement tools.
highly optimized tool set.
I read a book by a Czech resistance guy who managed to escape the death penalty in a Nazi court by feigning enough stupidity and "only" got sentenced to 10 years in prison in Glatz (nowadays Klodzko in Poland).
According to him, they spent their prison days working on manually recycling old ropes for the German war effort. In 1944-1945.
was one of those big intellectual shocks. a whole world opened up when i got into building and learned about the many uses of string. much the same as when i learned to code.