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This article is about nails as used in engineering. See Nail for other uses of the word. In Engineering , Woodworking and Construction , a nail is a Pin -shaped, sharp object of hard Metal , typically Steel , used as a Fastener . Nails are typically driven into the workpiece by a Hammer or by a Nail Gun driven by Compressed Air or a small Explosive charge. A nail holds materials together by Friction in the vertical direction and Shear strength in lateral directions. The point of the nail is also sometimes bent over or ''clinched'' to prevent it from pulling out. Nails are made in a great variety of forms for specialized purposes; the common everyday kind of nail is sometimes called a "wire nail" to distinguish it from nails in general. Some kinds of nails are referred to by other words, for example " Pin s", " Tack s" or " Brad s". HISTORY Nails go back at least to the Roman period. Until the end of the 18th Century , they were always made by hand, a nailer providing them with a head and point. Until the early 17th Century there were workmen called slitters who cut up iron bars to a suitable size for nailers to work on, but in 1590 the Slitting Mill was introduced to England, providing a mechanical means of producing rods of uniform cross-section. In the 19th Century , after the invention of machines to make 'cut nails', some nails continued to be made by hand, but the handmade nail industry gradually declined and was largely extinct by the end of that century. Manufactured ''cut nails'' were first introduced in America at the end of the 18th Century . ''Cut nails'' are machine-cut from flat sheets of steel (originally Iron . They are also called ''square nails'' because of their roughly Rectangular Cross-section . Though still used for historical renovations, and for heavy-duty applications, such as attaching Board s to Masonry walls, ''cut nails'' are much less common today than ''wire nails''. TYPES OF NAIL Types of nail include:
NAIL SIZES Most countries, except the USA and Canada, use a Metric system for describing nail sizes. A "50 x 3.0" indicates a nail 50 mm long (not including the head) and 3 mm in diameter. Lengths are rounded to the nearest millimeter. Canada uses a similar system except nail lengths are given in inches. US penny sizes Nails are usually sold by weight (either in bulk or in boxes). In the US, the length of a nail is designated by its ''penny size''. It is commonly believed that the origin of the term "penny" in relation to nail size is based on the old custom in England of selling nails by the hundred. A hundred nails that sold for six Pence were "six penny" nails. The larger the nail, the more a hundred nails would cost. Thus the larger nails have a larger number for its ''penny size''. The ''penny size'' is written with a number and the abbreviation ''d'' for penny (e.g. - 10d). '''''D''''' is an abbreviation for '' Denarius '', a Roman coin similar to a penny; this was the abbreviation for a penny in the UK before Decimalisation . A smaller number indicates a shorter nail and a larger number indicates a longer nail. Nails under 1-1/4 in., often called brads, are sold mostly in small packages with only a length designation (e.g. 1/2" (12 mm), 1-1/8" (28 mm), etc.).
NAIL TERMINOLOGY
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