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Nails are one of those commodities that no person can do without. Little males adore them though they tend to misuse them rather than make use of them Dads adore them since they ‘fix’ a lot of things. Wood workers adore them because, eliminate the nails and there’s virtually no job left they can do. Even some Mothers love them, as it offers something to hang stuff like aprons on.

There are actually so many different nails available today its rather bewildering. Gone are the days when you went into the old general dealer in rural areas and said: “give us one pound of 4 inch nails, then.” No, today it’s all extravagant Nails have titles and even grander, they have distinct uses and even more grand, they are packed in plastic bags. Oh, man, how the times have evolved

“Oh, you need to fix a metal sheet to a panel then, Laddie?” “Then you will need clout nails, wont you?” “Clout nails?” “Yes, well those are long slim nails with a big head that actually acts as a fastener and avoids the nail pulling through the material.” What’s quite interesting these days is the assortment of attractive nails on the market, called clavos nails. These cover anything from furniture decoration to door decorations. Some of the door decor versions are literally hand crafted and they come in numerous sizes up to a size fit to brighten a castle door. Pieces of furniture decoration by means of hardware is also extremely popular specifically in dining room furniture and leather furnishings where a selection of decorating nails are available to complete the upholstery job. Another exciting nail is the corrugated nail, which is a wide nail rather than being long and is corrugated. These nails are employed to bind two cross pieces of wood, together with glue and a fine job they do too, especially on workbenches and shelving in the garage.

Nails are certainly not all designed to be hammered home with a hammer – a number of nails, like concrete nails, can actually be driven home by shooting them into a wall with a gun employing a .22 cartridge. So much easier than clouting the old thumb a couple of times. Additionally, there are many different purpose-designed roofing nails. So, there are nails to fix corrugated iron sheets to wooden trusses, that come with water-proof washers, just as there are nails to be used to fix asphalt tiles to a roof. These nails may also be used to fix roofing shingles as they have a big flat head which offers a fastener and won’t fully sink into the tile.

There is hardly a place where a nail or 2 is not used, whether it is in the home, on the farm, in the retail outlet, even in the church. There are said to be more than two thousand different types of nails and the dimensions are determined by measuring its length. England was previously the largest manufacturers of nails and nails were very scarce in the USA at the time of the American Revolution, so house owners used to make their own nails making use of their fireplaces as furnaces. Even Thomas Jefferson was known to make his own nails. (I’m wondering if they were called presidential nails, maybe used to put his “throne” together?) Today the United States is the greatest producer of nails – perhaps because they have a lot of wooden houses?