65. Hammers.
—[Fig. 125] shows the two kinds of hammers most commonly used by workers in wood. The plain faced hammer has a flat face and is somewhat easier to learn to use than the bell-faced hammer, which has a slightly rounded face. The advantage of the bell-faced hammer lies in one’s ability to better set a nail slightly below the surface without the assistance of the nailset. This is a very great advantage on outside or on rough carpenter work. This setting of the nail with the hammer leaves a slight depression, however, in the wood, and is therefore not suited for inside finishing.
Fig. 125.
The handle of the hammer is purposely made quite long and should be grasped quite near the end.
66. Nails.
—Nails originally were forged by hand and were therefore very expensive. Later strips were cut from sheets of metal and heads were hammered upon these by means of the blacksmith’s hammer, the vise being used to hold the strips meanwhile. These were called cut nails. Early in the nineteenth century a machine was invented which cut the nails from the sheet metal and headed them.
Steel wire nails have about supplanted the cut nails for most purposes. They are made by a machine which cuts the wire from a large reel, points and heads the pieces thus cut off.
Wire nails, like cut nails, are roughly classed by woodworkers as common, finishing and casing nails. Thin nails with small heads are called brads. Wire nails are bought and sold by weight, the size of wire according to the standard wire gage and the length in inches being taken into consideration in specifying the size and fixing the price per pound.
In former practice, the size of nails was specified according to the number of pounds that one thousand of any variety would weigh. Thus the term sixpenny and eightpenny referred to varieties which would weigh six and eight pounds per thousand, respectively, penny being a corruption of pound. In present practice, certain sizes are still roughly specified as three, four, six, eight, ten, twenty and thirty penny.