Square nails?

[dmgadway]

Can anyone tell me when square nails became obsolete and round nails became in common use? I would like to know so I have some idea of the ages of some sites. Thank You. Dave.

 

[Tioga]

Round, or wire, nails came into common use about 1900. Here is a website link that provides a great quick reference to the history of nails: http://www.uvm.edu/histpres/203/nails.html

- Tioga

 

[ThatCannonballGuy]

I owned a house on the edge of Richmond VA which was built in 1926 ...and by the time I came along, it needed a lot of rehabilitation. The walls-studs (which actually measured a FULL 2 inches by 4 inches) had been put in place with square nails. But the interior door-trim of every room's door had round-nails. All the baseboards had square-nails. So in 1926, houses in a state capital city were still being constructed using a MIX of lots of square and lots of round nails.

By the way, you may find this interesting:
The very old lady who lived nextdoor told me her husband and brother had built my 1926 house. She said they ordered ALL the materials (floor & wall lumber, nails, siding-borads, trim, pipes, tin roofing, etc etc) as a UNIT from the Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Catalog. It showed a picture of a completed house with one catalog item number ...order that item (the house) and you'd get all the materials needed to construct it, as a package-deal. So, clearly, Sears was supplying extremely large quantities of square-nails for home construction purposes in 1926.

Regards,
TheCannonballGuy [PCGeorge]

 

[dmgadway]

Thanks guys!

 

[bunn leonard]

There are 2 kinds rose head and machine cut , Thomas jefferson started the machine style, the rose head hense the name looks more like a mushroom head by the blows it took dating it to the 1700s