Nail (fastener)

A pile of nails.

In engineering, woodworking and construction, a nail is a pin-shaped, sharp object of hard metal or alloy used as a fastener. Formerly wrought iron, today's nails are typically made of steel, often dipped or coated to prevent corrosion in harsh conditions or improve adhesion. Ordinary nails for wood are usually of a soft, low-carbon or "mild" steel (about 0.1% carbon, the rest iron and perhaps a trace of silicon or manganese). Nails for concrete are harder, with 0.5-0.75% carbon.^{[citation needed]}

Nails are typically driven into the workpiece by a hammer, a pneumatic nail gun, or a small explosive charge or primer. A nail holds materials together by friction in the axial direction and shear strength laterally. The point of the nail is also sometimes bent over or clinched after driving to prevent loosening.

Nails are made in a great variety of forms for specialized purposes. The most common is a wire nail. Other types of nails include pins, tacks, brads, and spikes.

[edit] History

Nails can be hammered or shot into materials such as wood.

Nails go back at least to the Ancient Roman period. The provision of iron for nails by King David for Solomon's Temple is mentioned in the Bible.^[1] Until the end of the 18th century, they were made by hand, an artisan known as a Nailer providing them with a head and point. Until the early 17th century there were workmen called Slitters who cut up iron bars to a suitable size for Nailers to work on, but in 1590 the slitting mill was introduced to England, providing a mechanical means of producing rods of uniform cross-section. In the 19th century, after the invention of machines to make "cut nails", some nails continued to be made by hand, but the handmade nail industry gradually declined and was largely extinct by the end of that century.

Manufactured cut nails were first introduced in America at the end of the 18th century. Cut nails are machine-cut from flat sheets of steel (originally iron). They are also called square nails because of their roughly rectangular cross section. Though still used for historical renovations, and for heavy-duty applications, such as attaching boards to masonry walls, cut nails are much less common today than wire nails.

Different types of nails: 1) asphalt, 2) asphalt with broad head, 3) copper, 4) steel with missing head, 5) flathead steel, 6) screw-shank, and 7) ring-shank with barbs

Types of nail include:

• brass tack
• bullethead nail
• canoe tacks
• carpet tack
• casing - similar to finish nails but on a larger scale
• clout
• coil nails
• coffin nail
• corrugated
• Dheadnails
• double-ended
• fiber cement
• finish
• horseshoe
• joist
• lost-head
• masonry - fluted nail for use in concrete
• oval brad
• floor brad (aka 'stigs') - flat, tapered and angular, for use in fixing floor boards
• panel pin
• plastic strip
• gutter spikes
• roofing tack
• ring shank - nails that contain ridges along the shank to provide extra support, an example would be the HurriQuake
• shake - small headed nails to use for nailing sidewall shakes
• square
• T
• Teco - 1-1/2 x .148 shanks nails used in metal connectors (usually hurricane ties)
• veneer pin
• wire
• wire-weld collated

[edit] Sizes

Most countries, except the United States, use a metric system for describing nail sizes. A 50 x 3.0 indicates a nail 50 mm long (not including the head) and 3 mm in diameter. Lengths are rounded to the nearest millimeter.

For example, finishing nail* sizes typically available from German suppliers are:

• Drahtstift mit Senkkopf (Stahl, DIN 1151)

[edit] United States penny sizes

In the United States, the length of a nail is designated by its penny size, written with a number and the abbreviation d for penny; for example, 10d for a ten-penny nail. A larger number indicates a longer nail, shown in the table below. Nails under 1¼ inch, often called brads, are sold mostly in small packages with only a length designation or with length and wire gauge designations; for example, 1" 18 ga or 3/4" 16 ga.

Penny sizes originally referred to the price for a hundred nails in England in the 15th century: the larger the nail, the higher the cost per hundred.^[2][3][4][5] The system remained in use in England into the 20th century, but is obsolete there today. The d is an abbreviation for denarius, a Roman coin similar to a penny; this was the abbreviation for a penny in the UK before decimalisation.

[edit] Terminology

• Box - a wire nail with a head; box nails have a smaller shank than common nails of the same size
• Bright - no surface coating; not recommended for weather exposure or acidic or treated lumber
• Casing - a wire nail with a slightly larger head than finish nails; often used for flooring
• CC or Coated - "cement coated"; nail coated with adhesive (cement) for greater holding power; also resin- or vinyl-coated; coating melts from friction when driven to help lubricate then hardens when cool; color varies by manufacturer (tan, pink, are common)
• Common - a common construction wire nail with a disk-shaped head that is typically 3-4 times the diameter of the shank: common nails have larger shanks than box nails of the same size
• Duplex - a common nail with a second head, allowing for easy extraction
• Drywall - a specialty blued-steel nail with a thin broad head used to fasten gypsum wallboard to wooden framing members
• Finish - a wire nail that has a head only slightly larger than the shank; can be easily concealed by countersinking the nail slightly below the finished surface with a nail-set and filling the resulting void with a filler (putty, spackle, caulk, etc.)
• Galvanized - treated for resistance to corrosion and/or weather exposure

• Electrogalvanized - provides a smooth finish with some corrosion resistance
• Mechanically galvanized - deposits more zinc than electrogalvanizing for increased corrosion resistance
• Hot-dip galvanized - provides a rough finish that deposits more zinc than other methods, resulting in very high corrosion resistance that is suitable for some acidic and treated lumber; often easier to bend than other types of nails

• Head - round flat metal piece formed at the top of the nail; for increased holding power
• Helix - the nail has a square shank that has been twisted; this makes the nail very difficult to pull out; often used in decking
• Length - distance from the head to the point of a nail
• Phosphate-coated - a dark grey to black finish providing a surface that binds well with paint and joint compound and minimal corrosion resistance
• Point - sharpened end opposite the "head" for greater ease in driving
• Ring Shank - small rings on the shank to prevent the nail from being worked back out often used in flooring
• Shank - the body the length of the nail between the head and the point; may be smooth, or may have rings or spirals for greater holding power
• Sinker - Same thin diameter as a box nail, cement coated (see above), with a grid embossed on the head to keep the hammer from slipping; these are the common nails used in framing today
• Spike - a large nail (usually over 4" - 100 mm)

[edit] See also

• Rail spike
• Denailer (a tool that removes used nails)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Metal nails

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Nail.

• UK DIY site Description of different types of nails
• US DIY site description of different nails
• Nail forging movie