It's idle curiosity really:
I've been pulling up a few floorboards recently from a Victorian house and it set me wondering: why are flooring brads the shape they are?
In particular, why to they have that little bit sticking one side only? Is there some trick of the trade that uses it?
Example:
I think it's because they're all cut from a sheet of steel. You can probably put two next to each other and make a rectangle, so there's no wastage from the sheet.
It's the head, that's what holds the floorboard down. If the board shrinks with drying, a simple headless wire would come loose and even a slightly tapered brad would work a bit loose.
Headed nails are ancient, but they're manufactured by hand forging a rod, then upsetting a head onto it. Studded front doors are a visible display of wealth, as much as a strengthener, because they showed the owner could afford surplus nails just for show. As water-powered wire- drawing developed, the wire nail began to appear, but these were still headed by hand.
The very first flooring nails had just this sort of tapered brad shape, but headless, and were sheared from hammered strip. The shear was usually power-worked (water-driven cam wheel or crank), and the strip fed in manually. Manufacturing (early-mid-19thC) a more powerful machine (i.e. by vertical punching more than sideways shearing) allowed the tool shape to be changed to incorporate a head. This also requires the development of a factory system along Adam Smith's lines, because a nail cutting machine was now only useful for making nails. The strip was also now more likely to be rolled than hammered. This shape, with the asymmetric head, is used because it tesselates onto a strip without waste, unlike a T-shaped brad.
Lost head nails are certainly easier to knock in. A concave nail punch sits nicely over the top
The real name is 'cut' nails - they are cut from sheet steel.
This development was one of the first glimmers of the industrial revolution. When it appeared in this country in 1605, the manufacturing technique had been imported from the lowlands. Suddenly, nails were cheap as chips when beforehand they had been valuable hand forged items. Oak lathing began to be used much more widely, providing a suitably supportive base for parget
Anna
FWIW I have always assumed they grip so well here because 100+ years has added a layer of rust which means they have turned into expansion fittings - and ones with a high friction coating. But I could easily be v wrong.
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