Nails are made both by hand and machinery, the former being called
“wrought,” and the latter “cut” nails. For making nails by hand, a
hammer and an anvil only are used. The “nailor,” having put several
rods of iron of the required size into the fire to get hot, that he
may use one after the other, and so lose no time, takes one out and
with the hammer beats it to a point, leaving a little shoulder (fig.
1). He then places it (at the part where the dotted line is in the
figure) on a wedge fixed to the anvil, and with a blow of the hammer
divides it; it is taken up by tongs, dropped into a hole in the
anvil, and the shoulder beaten flat; this is called a “tack” (fig.
2), for a “clasp nail” the head is made of a different form by a
particular way of striking it (fig. 3), and the form of the hole in
the anvil determines whether they shall be square or round; wrought
“brads” have the form of fig. 4. These are the principal forms of
nails, but many others are made by soldering shanks to cast heads, as
coffin-nails, and some (chiefly used by gardeners and plasterers for
driving into brickwork) are made of cast-iron. Machine-made nails are
cut by compression from a sheet of iron. Brads are cut out, simply,
as in fig. 5, which uses up the whole of the iron without any waste,
and requires no finishing; but other forms of nails are cut first
into simple wedges, and have the heads finished afterwards either by
the blows of a hammer or by compression.
Illustration: CUTTING BRADS.
Most nails are made flat or chisel-shaped at the point, that they may
not split the wood. In driving a nail with a flat point, the length
of the point should be placed across the grain of the wood, and then
it will hardly ever split it, but if otherwise, the nail, acting as a
wedge, opens the grain and splits the wood.