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Comment by dan-robertson | Hacker News Reader

> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries

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.

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> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries

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.

According to Wikipedia’s history of nails, wire (round) nails came out in about 1860. I’ve lived in 4 houses built before 1930 That were all full of them. Cut nails continued to be used for masonry through the present.

What about galvanized nails? Surely those did not exist even 150 years ago?

Galvanization is a process that happens after initial manufacturing of the nail. To get to that stage, it must already have been made by one of those two techniques.

Well, I do know that cut/square nails are vastly superior to the glorified sharpened steel wire we use today. Square nails don't cause wood to split like rounded wire nails do. It's a great example of older superior technology being replaced due to cost.

The flipside being, when is the last time you heard of a house falling apart because the modern nails weren't good enough?

Sometimes good enough and 10x cheaper is the right call.

If you are making the home out of old growth lumber and stone, using materials meant to last is vital to the longevity of the home as well.

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.

This company has been manufacturing galvanized nails since 1819 (203 years), and their current factory building has been making galvanized nails continuously since 1848 (174 years).

http://web.archive.org/web/20210612014407/https://www.tremon...

They might have, i saw non wire nails being used in housing built in 1960.

> Modern nails are different from the nails in the 60's.

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...

"Cut nails", the traditional wedge shaped ones, cut the fibers as the nail goes in. Modern wire nails, with their sharp points, shove the fibers to the sides, increasing the risk of splitting.

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

and - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBUE_C8XHE

I'd guess modern twist nails have a similar effect on the wood to cut nails, with the hard angles of the twist cutting fibres?

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).

Without looking it up, I'd assume nails in 1960s were made of steel. Not much iron going around since the end of the 19th / early 20th century anymore.

To my knowledge, there's one company making cut nails for woodworking[0] in the US. The pricing might be somewhat distorted by the fact that they're a specialty item rather than the commodity that wire nails are.

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.

> nail sizes in the US are still typically given in pence

Reminds me of the Primus song. "Seen 'em down in SoCo pounding sixteen-penny nails."

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