"Dead as a Doornail"

[JasonW]

The term "Dead as a doornail" has been used for a long, long time to describe all things that are most certainly dead. The question is, why a door nail of all things and where did this term originate from?

The term can be found in the written English language as far back as the 14th century in writings such as Shakespeare's Henry IV and other writings from the mid 1300's.

Some have thought that the meaning came from the lower nail used to hold a doorknocker to the door and the repeated banging of the striker on the head of that nail would surely make it dead. However, it is most likely that this term had it's origin from a typical carpentry task done in early door construction.

When doors where made of wood (from the 14th century to about the middle 1800's) the nails used to hold the door hardware on, or to nail through 2 pieces of wood, were made purposely longer than the width of the door. When the hinges and latches were nailed on they would go to the other side of the door and bend the tip of the nail over with a hammer to flatten them to the surface. The term for this technique was called "clinching". Once this was done the nail was considered "dead" for two reasons. First, the nail was almost imposable to remove and would not come loose. Second, nails were mostly made from cast and wrought iron or other brittle metals and if you try to straighten it out it will, in most cases, break the tip making the nail unusable for re-use. So, when clinching a nail, the nail is dead.

The next time you here the term "Dead as a Doornail" you now know the history behind it. Just another term that came from ancient tradesmen of our kind. The meaning of the term has almost been lost because technical advances have us doing things in a different way. It's funny that the term is still alive and well today although many don't know what it means.

Blog (http://vtrenovations.com/blog/?p=18)

[Silvertree]

Thanks, and what about "Drunk as a Goose", does that have anything to do with Rory?

[Leo G]

I have no history on the term but I have clinched thousands of nails in my career. Taking two 7/8" thick doors of different panel configurations and nailing them back to back. That way you can have a 8 panel door on the outside and a 5 panel door on the inside.

I had a few specialized tools to do the clinching. A regular hammer, a pc of 1/4" thick steel and a set of ground down pliers and a ground nail set. Most doors have about 90 nails in them. It took a good while to put all those nails in.

[tomstruble]

yea the nail is not just bent over,right?don't you return the point back into the wood somehow?

[JasonW]

In early American doors they were simply flattened to the surface.

[neolitic]

Not much of a "point" on wrought nails.

[tomstruble]

oh i thought ive seen different,sorry

[JasonW]

oh i thought ive seen different,sorry

I'm not going as far to say that no one ever did that. As with any type of work in our trades, each craftsman had their own way of going about things that made their work unique. I'm sure some did exactly what you say. I would think that you would be at risk of breaking the old cast nail by bending it much further than 90 deg. though.

[naptownCr]

But weren't nails forged?
Cast iron will not bend at all it will snap.

[neolitic]

But weren't nails forged?
Cast iron will not bend at all it will snap.

Not cast iron, wrought iron.
They started with sheets,
cut them with something like
a chisel onto rough width.
Then drove them into a
tapered hole in an anvil
called a nail header.

[JasonW]

In the beginning of the industrial revolution many nails were indeed cast.

http://www.cas.umt.edu/anthropology/courses/anth455/documents/JennickStudyofCastIronNailsSHAVol11No11977_000.pdf

While most are thought to come from England, there was a foundry here in Vermont that made them as well.

[Leo G]

The nails were made from raw steel, put into a form and the heads were flattened out. Then the nail was heated red hot, maybe a little hotter and you grabbed the end with a pair of pliers and pulled. The nail was drawn this way. This is where the point came from. The place I worked at would make the nails. We didn't have a forge, just an acetylene torch, but we made them in a similar way they made them back then. The nails were pretty soft and would rust easily. To fix that they would heat the nail back up til it lost its magnetism and then toss them in a vat of linseed oil. This would put a temper on them and turn them black. The black coating would make the nails pretty rust resistant.

You needed to predrill a hole for the modern nail because they didn't have much of a point (Tremont Nails) You would bang the nail through using a backer board so it wouldn't split out. After you banged all the nails in you would flip the door over and yank off your breakout strips. You would bend the top of the nail over, about 1/4". Then take your pc of steel and put it under the door, under the particular head of the tail you were going to clinch. If you didn't do this the nail would back out and you wouldn't squeeze the door together when you clinched it. You then take the modified punch and where you bent the nail is where you would place the punch. Start banging on the punch so that the nail would start to roll over and go back into the wood. It really took some time to get the technique down so the nail would roll the correct way and go where you wanted it to.

We usually used a "T" head nail and when you bent the nail over you tried to mimic the head of the tail with the bent over part. If you were good, you would have a hard time telling which side of the nail was the head and which was the point. Other times we used a 4 strike head also called a rose head nail. This was a more expensive option. The rose head would go on the inside of the house and the clinch on the outside. :smash:

[naptownCr]

Here is another interesting old saying
Its cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!
Anyone got any ideas where this came from.
No googling

[tomstruble]

i think this is the process Leo is talking about

i notice the clinched end goes cross grain


http://blog.lostartpress.com/2009/03/22/Clinching+Nails+Sometimes+Teeth.aspx

[neolitic]

Here's a shorthand version...

"University of Vermont
HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAM
Historic Preservation Research

Nails: Clues to a Building's History
Thomas D. Visser
http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu61/neoliticman/Nails.jpg



Nails provide one of the best clues to help determine the age of historic buildings, especially those constructed during the nineteenth century, when nail-making technology advanced rapidly. Until the last decade of the 1700s and the early 1800s, hand-wrought nails typically fastened the sheathing and roof boards on building frames. These nails were made one by one by a blacksmith or nailor from square iron rod. After heating the rod in a forge, the nailor would hammer all four sides of the softened end to form a point. The pointed nail rod was reheated and cut off. Then the nail maker would insert the hot nail into a hole in a nail header or anvil and form a head with several glancing blows of the hammer. The most common shape was the rosehead; however, broad "butterfly" heads and narrow L-heads also were crafted. L-head nails were popular for finish work, trim boards, and flooring. Between the 1790s and the early 1800s, various machines were invented for making nails from bars of iron. The earliest machines chopped nails off the iron bar like a guillotine, wiggling the bar from side to side with every stroke to produce a tapered shank. These are known as type A cut nails. At first, the heads were often made by hand, but soon machines were developed to pound a head on the end. This type of nail was made until the 1830s. By the 1820s, however, an effective design for a nail making machine was developed: it flipped the iron bar over after each stroke. With the cutter set at an angle, every nail was chopped to a taper. Nails made by this method are known as type B nails.

Cutting the nails leaves a small burr along the edge as the metal is torn apart. By carefully examining the edges for evidence of these burrs, it is possible to distinguish between the earlier type A nails and the later type B nails. Type A nails have burrs on the diagonally opposite edges, while the type B nails have both burrs on the same side. This kind of evidence can be used to establish the approximate period of construction or alteration of a building. Type B cut nails continued to be the most common through most of the greater part of the nineteenth century. With the rapid development of the Bessemer process for producing inexpensive soft steel during the 1880s, however, the popularity of using iron for nail making quickly waned. By 1886, 10 percent of the nails produced in the United States were made of soft steel wire. Within six years, more steel-wire nails were being produced than iron-cut nails. By 1913, 90 percent were wire nails. Cut nails are still made today, however, with the type B method. These are commonly used for fastening hardwood flooring.

c. 1996 UVM Historic Preservation Program
Adapted from A Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings by Thomas D. Visser, published by the University Press of New England.
For further information contact: tvisser@uvm.edu
"
Eric Sloane had a nice piece
I;ll try for later....

The cast nails seem to be mostly
large, and rare?

[JasonW]

The cast nails seem to be mostly
large, and rare?

Yes, they were rare and mostly used for their cosmetic qualities. These were not the most commonly used nails by far. They did use them on some of the more elaborate and decorative hardware's for doors in that time.

[tomstruble]

maybe coffin nails?might be where the dead part comes in


Sorry Jason didn't mean to step all over this on you

[JasonW]

No worries Tom, it's all in good fun. I was able to make a few minor changes to the blog before it went on my site. It's all good.

[Leo G]

Once you post a blog can you edit it? Or is it committed forever.

You can edit it

[neolitic]

As a side note, I have read several times
that when the early pioneers moved on
they often burned their cabins to salvage
the nails, as they were the most valuable
component of the building.

[JasonW]

As a side note, I have read several times
that when the early pioneers moved on
they often burned their cabins to salvage
the nails, as they were the most valuable
component of the building.

I wouldn't doubt that at all. In fact the agreement with England in the early days was that everything had to be purchased from England. Early settlers were not allowed to start any manufacturing of their own over here. Even bricks where shipped to the new land from England.

A lot of very good craftsmen came over thinking they would have a lot of work but found that there was very little skilled labor and no industry thriving other than farming. Most went back. Very few stayed.

[JasonW]

Once you post a blog can you edit it? Or is it committed forever.

You can edit it

Glad you got that sorted by yourself Leo.:laugh3:

[neolitic]

Once you post a blog can you edit it? Or is it committed forever.

You can edit it

Glad you got that sorted by yourself Leo.:laugh3:

Those of us who work alone
frequently discuss things amonst ourselves.
Right?
Right?
Agreed then! http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu61/neoliticman/smiliethumbsup.gif

[Bodger]

Those of us who work alone
frequently discuss things amonst ourselves.
Right?
Right?
Agreed then! http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/uu61/neoliticman/smiliethumbsup.gif



I do that. But mostly I call myself an idiot all day. :grin:

[neolitic]

I do that. But mostly I call myself an idiot all day. :grin:

The second most frequently used
word in my workday.

[tomstruble]

hey i do that too:rolleyes3: