How do you get old nails out of salvaged wood?

[David DeCristoforo]

It's so easy! Just burn the wood. Then you can simply pick the nails out of the small pile of ash that will remain. A little wire brushing will clean em right up.

[David Prince]

lol. I got a woodstove, but am so anal that I pull the nails out of my scraps before I burn them so that I have clean ashes to throw in the trash when they cool.

[Myk Rian]

It's so easy! Just burn the wood. Then you can simply pick the nails out of the small pile of ash that will remain. A little wire brushing will clean em right up.

What about the part of the wood you want to keep? I'm not going to rip a nail edge off if I know nails are still in it.
The wood I'm salvaging has many 5" nails in it, plus some old square cuts. After using the metal detector, I then rip the edge off.

[David DeCristoforo]

"What about the part of the wood you want to keep?"

Oh... well my method would not work if you want to keep the wood too...

[george wilson]

I THINK I saw that nail puller with the claw at Lowe's,but I don't think it was real expensive. I paid $2.00 for one I found somewhere. You might have to cut down each side of the nail with a chisel to expose enough of it to pull if it is broken off flush.

[Stephen Edwards]

[QUOTE=Dave Sharpe;1253823]

I have one of these.....works pretty good if you don't have much to grab, it tightens up as you apply more pressure...

http://hand-tools.hardwarestore.com/...er-613231.aspx


Dave - I bought one of those, but have been pretty frustrated. I can't get it to grip the nail well, particularly if the head is gone already. Any secrets as to how to use it? Does the nail head have to be intact and protruding a bit above the surface?

I have on old one of these that was my Daddy's. Still works great.

[Stephen Edwards]

If I can't drive them through the board then I use a plug cutting bit to cut a shallow circular hole around the nail head and attach a pair of vise grips, then twist and lift. I either fill the hole with the next sized plug cut out of a raggedy area of the board, or just plane off the top of the wood until the plug holes are gone.

I'm thinking about building a really powerful electromagnet to just draw the nails out, much like a Quarter Shrinker.
http://capturedlightning.com/frames/...n=bookmarkfeed

That device might work very well for shrinking other things, too. If so, there may be a market for that in Borneo, New Guinea and some tribal regions in South America!

If one were to market it those areas you'd want to be sure not to go in with a "big head" attitude!

[Pete Schupska]

It leaves a bit of a hole, but won't ruin a blade:

I've been using a very small diameter hole saw without the center drill bit to remove old nails from some salvaged barn lumber before resawing it or planing. It does give a new hole to work around, but not much more than the nail itself.


On a side note, there was a Q&A about removing broken brass screws in Wood (page 78 of issue 194).

Here's a link:
http://www.woodcraft.com/catalog/family.aspx?id=2000983

[Chris Parks]

For a no effort method, just get someone else to do it and you sit around and drink beer..

[Brian Penning]

This tool is excellent once you get them protruding....

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...=1,43456,43400


But to get them started...




http://www.leevalley.com/hardware/pa...=3,41306,41331

Review here..
http://www.toolsnob.com/archives/200...ter_review.php

[Andy Gilbert]

+1 on the Nail Extractor (the yellow handled tool). Sometimes its hard to justify paying alot for a single purpose tool, especially one that is used for salvage, but in this case I have found it well worth it. It saves time and effort on small to medium size nails.

[Rick Thom]

In the Autumn 2008 Woodworking Magazine they recommend a 'tube extractor' to remove old nails and broken-off screws etc.
This is just a hollow steel tube @ 2" long (whatever length you want) in whatever diameter you need (a bit larger inside dia than the object you want to remove), that has sharp teeth filed into the end. You just stick this in your power drill, and place over the nail and the teeth cut into the wood to whatever depth you want. Break off the 'plug' of wood containing the nail and pull it out. Fill the hole with a dowel or matching plug. Just about like a plug cutter.
I haven't made any of these yet but I have 10 old heart pine 3x10 salvaged floor joists with lots of nails to try it out on.
This should be very easy to make, but I haven't found any for sale either.
I would be happy to post the short article but the forum admin would probably send me to the shed for doing so.

[Brian Ashton]

I must've dug thousands of hand made square nails out of recycled fir... Used to go through semi trailer loads of it for making furniture.

Often you can grab hold of the nail with a cats paw and bend it somewhat if the nail is in good condition. If the nail has lots of rust and is very flakey (the layers of iron from being folded during forging) it will almost certainly break if bent.

The best way I've found with nails that old is to dig around it and then grab with a pair of vise grips, but don't leverage it up with them like most do by rolling the vise grips. These nails are very fragile after so many years and will break/flake, off and leave most of the nail in the wood. What I do next is pry the vise grips up in the direction that the nail was driven in with a small flat bar. I.e. if the nail was driven in vertically I pry up vertically. Because most hand made square nails are tapered, once you get them moving, they come out pretty easy - as long as they're not being bent as they're being pulled. More time consuming but the result are better. New round nails, just rip them out anyway you can, they don't break off too often.

Once you think you have the wood nail free it's a good idea to skim all sides on the table saw - there's always a few nails that get missed and hopefully the TS blade will reveal them instead of the jointer or planer. The blade I used was actually called a wrecking blade. It had 8 negatively raked teeth that could take a great deal of punishment from nails, dirt, grit screws...

[Wayne Cannon]

There is a screw-extractor that is like a small diameter (e.g., 1/4") hole saw that works great.

http://www.woodcraft.com/catalog/family.aspx?id=2000983
http://www.amazon.com/1-4-Diameter-S...658885&sr=1-17



This "Nail Extractor" is my favorite for pulling nails once you have it partially exposed.

http://www.nailextractor.com/

[Karl Card]

I was given a bunch of red oak. it used to be a boat in its earlier day but was full of nails. Had so many nails i was wondering why it still wasnt a boat. lol.
But i was lucky in that the nails were all straight in and spaced far enough apart that i was able to just cut out the section that contained the nail and still had a big enough piece of wood to make something with. So now I have a bunch of red oak pen blanks, spindles, planks for making boxes, and some just fo whatever...