"It is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable, lam ...a nail maker."
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president, in a letter
Nails were among the first metal objects made by hand. In Roman times, any sizable fortress would have a workshop where workmen fashioned the metal items required by the army. Here, workmen called "slitters" cut up iron bars for the attention of "nailers," who gave them a head and a point.
Early nails were usually square in section, and the head of each was formed simply by turning over one end to make an L-shape. Such nails were expensive to produce, and they were so valued that people sometimes burned their houses when moving in order to retrieve nails from the ashes for reuse.
In 1590 water-powered slitting mills were introduced into England. After rolling the hot iron into sheets, each sheet was slit into long, narrow, square- sectioned bars by rollers that cut like shears. The flat, headless, machined bars continued to be finished off as nails and spikes by hand, often by blacksmiths producing them to order. This was the procedure until the advent of the nail-making machine at the end of the eighteenth century; by the end of the nineteenth century, the handmade nail industry was extinct.
Nails are made in a variety of forms. Most common, dating from the late nineteenth century, is the "wire nail," as distinct from "stamped nails," "pins," "tacks," or "brads." Nails are now available in many different sizes and shapes, with a variety of heads.
