WHAT IS THE 'PENNY' OF A NAIL?
A nail is the most widely used fastener for attaching one piece of wood to another. Nails can also join wood and such materials as cloth, sheet metal and wire. Nails are usually measured in units called "pennies" and designated by the letter "d."
Nails measured in the penny system range in size from two penny nails one inch long to 60 penny nails that are six inches long. Nails shorter or longer than these are measured in either caches or centimeters.
The system of measuring nails in pennies probably started in England several hundred years ago. No one knows the exact sources of the penny unit, however. Some say that a penny once stood fox the weight of 1,000 nails. Using this theory, 1,000 for penny nails weighed four pounds.
Other experts say they think the unit represented the price of 100 nails, so that 100 four penny nails would have cost four pennies.
The length of a nail may be specified either in inches or by penny size.
Here's the penny scale: a two penny nail is one inch long; the three penny nail is 1 1/4 inches long; the four penny nail is an inch and a half long; a five penny nail is an inch and three quarters long.
A six penny nail is two inches long while an eight penny nail is 2 1/2 inches long. The 10 penny nail is three inches long. And up the scale goes the penny count.
Most nails are made of steel but some are made of aluminum, brass, copper or stainless steel. Steel nails may be plated with cadmium, copper or nickel to resist rust. Some nails have a coating of zinc or of an adhesive substance called resin that makes them hold more tightly.
Carpenters generally use a "claw" hammer to drive nails. The claw also can be used for pulling out nails.
About 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia the earliest nails were made. Artists used them to fasten sheets of copper to wooden frames to make statues.
American colonists hammered nails by hand from bars of hot iron back is the early 1700s. Then about 1775, an inventor in Cumberland, R.I., named Jeremiah Wilkinson developed a process for cutting nails from a sheet of cold iron.
About 1851, a machinist from New York City named William Hassell invented the first machine for making nails from wire.
Today, almost all nails are made from wire by a machine that can produce more than 500 per minute. Wire is fed into the machine from a large coil. A set of cutters trims off a length of wire and forms the points of the nail at one end. At the same time, a hammer shapes the head at the other end. Finally the nails are polished, plated oz coated.
Nearly 300 different kinds of sails are manufactured in the United States today. They sell is boxes of one, five, 10, 25 or 50 pounds. Special small nails, such as tacks and brads, may be sold in two or four ounce boxes.