Wrought Nails, Cut Nails, and Clinching

Hand-wrought nails

Before 1790, nails were forged one at a time by a smith or nailer: a square rod drawn to a point and headed in a nail header, often with the faceted “rose head” of four or so hammer blows. Wrought nails were used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and into the 19th ¹.

• The penny system: in medieval England nails were sold by their price per hundred, for example 8d (eight pence) per hundred. That naming was established by the 15th century; sizes later standardized by length but kept the names ¹.
• Scarcity: nails were an important colonial import. A 1645 Virginia statute prohibited settlers from burning down old buildings to recover their nails ¹.
• Clinching: wrought iron’s fibers run along the nail, so the point can be bent over without breaking.

Cut nails

After the Revolution, nail factories in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania began shearing nails from iron plate, first by hand power, then water and steam ¹. Lee Nelson’s chronology for the National Park Service outlines the phases ¹:

Until the 1830s, the iron fibers in most cut nails ran across the shank, so they couldn’t be clinched; smiths kept making wrought nails for clinching and trim ¹. Many buildings of 1790-1830 used both: the Old Town Hall in Wilmington, Delaware (1798-1800) has machine-cut flooring brads and lath nails, but wrought nails in all the finish woodwork ¹. Cut nails made after about 1830 look almost the same as those made today ¹.

Wire nails

Wire nails were in builders’ vocabulary by the 1880s but didn’t become dominant until the 1890s, and many builders preferred cut nails well into the 20th century because they hold better ¹.

Dating with nails

Nelson’s rules ¹:

• Identify the nail type precisely.
• Know when that type reached your area and when better ones replaced it.
• Compare with dated buildings nearby.
• Several types in one building may mean a transition period or later alterations.
• Never date a building from a single nail.

Using cut nails in furniture

Cut nails are still made and suit period work: six-board chests, boxes, drawer bottoms, backboards, and mouldings.

• Orient the nail with the grain: a cut nail is a wedge. Drive it with its taper running along the grain, the head’s long side parallel to the grain, so it cuts the fibers instead of splitting them apart.
• Pilot holes near ends and in hardwood, slightly smaller than the nail.
• Clinching: drive the nail through both pieces, then bend the protruding point back into the wood, ideally curling the tip so it buries itself across the grain. Use wrought-style or soft clinch nails. Clinched nails hold battens on doors and lids and can’t pull out.

Try it

Collect nails from an old building or barn you’re allowed into, sort them into wrought, cut, and wire, and compare heads, shanks, and points. Then nail a small box together with modern cut nails oriented with the grain, and clinch a batten across a board.

What to take from this

Wrought nails ran through the 18th century, sold by the penny-per-hundred system. Cut nails took over between 1790 and 1830; early ones couldn’t be clinched, so wrought nails stayed in use for clinching and trim. Perfected cut nails date from the late 1830s, and wire nails dominated from the 1890s. Date only from many nails, and use cut nails oriented with the grain.