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.
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 DeCristoforo
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.
Never, under any circumstances, consume a laxative and sleeping pill, on the same night
"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...
David DeCristoforo
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.
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!
Stephen Edwards
Hilham, TN 38568
"Build for the joy of it!"
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
For a no effort method, just get someone else to do it and you sit around and drink beer..
Chris
Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening
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
Last edited by Brian Penning; 11-07-2009 at 7:33 PM.
+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.
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.
Last edited by Rick Thom; 11-07-2009 at 8:50 PM.
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...
Sent from the bathtub on my Samsung Galaxy(C)S5 with waterproof Lifeproof Case(C), and spell check turned off!
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/
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...