Large rusty nails in salvaged 4x3 hardwood...

One to add in, heat.

I was going to use a gas blowlamp but couldn't find the "head" part so used a hot air gun with a heat reflector nozzle fitted (usually used to solder pipe fittings).

Expansion & contraction appears to have loosened the grip of the rusty nails in the timber, and with a combination of mechanical techniques, they are all out.

Wow... £40...! plus P&P! Cheaper to burn it on the fire & buy new!

Are these perhaps the cut nails used in floorboards? If so, old ones can be very difficult but once snapped off flush on the underside they can normally be driven through with a punch (from the back).

If oval nails they can often be driven right through from the top side. Hard work but less risk of splintering the good side.

If round nails (with conventional big heads) then as for flat nails. Or grind heads off with angle grinder and then drive through from the top, but this obviously leaves more damage to fill.

Particularly if rusty it may be worth soaking with WD-40 or similar, although obviously this has the potential to change the appearance.

Something I have done a bit of, reusing old wood in building restoration, scarfing bits on to timbers full of nails etc..

You need to get a grip of the nail and pull hard. Even then it may not come. Sometimes bashing it in a touch will loosen it abit so you can pull it back out. There are tools called nail pullers which can be very effective but are difficult to find now. They used to be used in warehouses when packing cases were nailed up. I think I bought a mini nail puller from Axminster not many years ago... ... no, I am wrong, google tells me they are available all over the place, so get one. otherwise it's chiseling out enough to grip then mole grips and ways of clamping down on pincers to crowbar the things out. a mixture of ingenuity, brutish force and patience will get you there.

TW

Put the timber somewhere really dry so that it will shrink away from the rusty nails and then you might stand a chance of getting the nails out.

Could take a while to dry thoroughly.

FiL had a tool for doing this. No idea what it was called, but it was tubular with something in one end of the tube. Apparently it was for pulling nails out of architraves. Whatever it was, it was *old* - certainly pre-war, if not pre-1900. Father-to-son jobbie.

Never seen a modern version.

You can get a good grip if you have a tapered hole with some ball bearings in, you pop it over the nail and it will grip really well while you lever it up.

This thing had some sort of angled claw.

FiLs father was a painter and decorator if that helps.

the four foot wrecking bar in the boot has a nail pulling slot on it. Six inch nails are not a problem if you can get it under the head, but you do need to pack it up when part way out.

Well the rust has made the metal both rough and larger. What is needed is something that attacks metal of the ferrous variety but not wood.

It would be laborious to cut the ends off and then use a punch to hammer each out. Brian

he was told that ages ago

I built some raised beds out or old fence posts that were full of nails. After breaking quite a few I found that if I bent them over and then used the claw of the hammer to twist them back and forth a few times (like removing and tightening a screw), that broke the worst of the bond twixt nail and wood and then they?d pull out easily.

Tim

It's quite a substantial tool and would probably last a couple of lifetimes.

You posted that just in time for me to order one before I lifted the two layers of floor boards in our spare room.

Sadly I didn't read the post until I'd finished...

Not that the boards are worth saving anyway. A _lot_ of woodworm (and a little rot) most of which I hope is historic. If it isn't it soon will be now we can get at the joists.

Andy

If you are like me, you will order one now anyway, then in five years time when you need it again you won't be able to find it.

:-)