Hello all,
I have a question about finishing nails. I’m a novice woodworker, and that’s even being generous to myself, and am building a reproduction of a shaker blanket chest with 2 drawers.
The chest requires 2 solid pine panels to be attached to two other panels whose grain runs perpendicular. All corners are rabbeted. The Skaker craftsman used nails for this. I am wondering if I can use spiral nails, for more grab, rather than just smooth finishing nails, or will the extra grab of the spiral nail defeat the purpose of letting the nails allow the wood to move?
Oh, and can I put just a dab of glue at the very center of the joint?
Thank you in advance,
Carl
Replies
I have no idea what is correct but I thought that the very old Shaker work used wrought 'cut' nails. You can make your own if you can find some scraps of Iron that small. About 8d size? Not sure again.
I would put a 'dab or more' of glue at the center of each panel and use a common 'coated' nail we have today. Not sure I would use a 'finishing' nail. I'd use a common flat head nail and just drill a 'bit larger' clearence holes in the panel that was smaller than the nail head...
Then again, long ago, I made more than a few small sized 'cut nails' using some old USA copper pennies. Hard work but fun work! I worked the pennies with only a 'carpenters' framing hammer and a bar of steel (between the penny and the hammer to 'hammer' near the head).
I would think that any 'proper' Shaker woodworker, used anything they had available at the time... They wanted function! Not glitter!
My kin are from Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Not Shakers, but I think both may have some of the same ideas about woodworking..... If it does the job, with what we have available OR can make, We use it!
I never thought of Shakers or any other, that worried about their work lasting hundreds of years. They made wood 'work'.. for the job intended when making it.... If the wooden bucket leaked water.. They may have tossed it into a river (with a rope to get it back in a few days).. If that failed.. It was firewood for the next supper for the family..
I'm sure they never got hung up on what other thought about what they did.. EXCEPT at Church meetings!
Will is right.
if you want a source for "cut nails" you might try
http://www.tremontnail.com
Regards
That's all great advice. You folks are great.
Thanks much,
Carl
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