Adirondack case guy

Well-known Member
It would take a pretty husky lad to drive the two big nails. One is 14" long and the T toped one is 13" The short fat ones are RR spikes.
My dad was the type who saved old nails in soup and coffee cans.
These nails he saved when this old barn was taken down on the farm.
I picked the RR spikes from an old abandon track bed in the area.
Loren
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I bought an old T shaped, 2 story, turn of the century house when I first got here a guy had advertised, as he wanted it torn down. Figured for $250 and I haul off the wood, I couldn't go wrong. Had full dimensioned virgin timber and rectangular nails like the small ones pictured. I collected them in a 5 gallon bucket.

Interesting that the glass in the window panes shrank like ?" or so, or maybe it was the wood that shrank, but none the less, there was an air gap at the top of each pane. Staircase was spiral and my wife wanted to bring it home........for what????? Luckily I won that one.

For about 2 months, every Saturday we'd load the kids up and go over and remove and haul home, wood that could be used to build animal shelters and out buildings. As it turned out, it wasn't that good of a deal as I originally thought. Definitely wouldn't do it again.
 
I have heard that about old glass, that it shrinks, or droops like a very thick liquid.

Now scientists say it doesn't. But I don't trust them anyway!

It would be interesting to mike the thickness at the top and bottom, see if there is a pattern. Still hard to tell, the old glass wasn't consistently the same thickness.

But I do suspect the wood has shrunk, and deteriorated more at the bottom from holding water.
 
Isn't glass consider a liquid? I think so. I remember hearing about Kodak doing a long term test on glass when I was in school back in the 1970s.
 
as a kid one of my jobs was to remove nails from used lumber that dad would bring home. had to straighten every nail with a hammer on an old short piece of railroad track. there was a railroad track about 1/4 mile behind the house, one year in the 50's a friend and I walked the track picking up spikes and other metal, bummed a ride to the scrap yard with an old tow sack about 1/2 full. expecting a huge payout at the scales we got 18 cents. asking about the small amount the man replied " scrap metal ain't bringing much son". never seen the large ones, ancient wooden ships were built with bronze spikes of that size. are the smaller nails called "cut nails"?
 
(quoted from post at 11:31:15 01/16/18)

Interesting that the glass in the window panes shrank like ?" or so, or maybe it was the wood that shrank, but none the less, there was an air gap at the top of each pane.

Seems more likely the wood deteriorated away and the putty shrank too. Thats what happens with most of the old windows I've seen that have that issue.
 
When they built the Alcan highway they used big long spikes like the ones you have to build timber/log bridges. When we traveled the highway in 74 many of the old bridges were still standing.
 
Glass is a frozen liquid. If you look at glass in very old mutten windows you will see the glass looks wrinkled. It slowly moves "sags" in the frames. If the sand had iron in in it the stuff gets a pretty purple coloring to it. Larison's cornee church in Ringoes,NJ has the original glass windows and they are all slightly purple color and sag and are wrinkled.
 

I removed a bunch of "cut" nails from an old farm house I used to own.
They are still blue and not rusty at all.
I have everything from 10d down to 4d finishing nails.
I never even knew they made "cut" finishing nails 'til
I found these.
I intend to put them in a framed display for our historical society museum.
 
Pete; I don't know whether those are cut nails, but I've heard that one of the things blacksmiths used to do between paying jobs was to make nails and other common items which were reasonably easy to make and in wide demand. If you've done any blacksmithing you'll know that it's easier to beat something into shape if it's got flat sides than if you have to make it round (cylindrical). I don't think it would make it easier to make the nails tapered than to make them straight, so those probably are cut nails.

Stan
 
Not been around blacksmiths shops but often wondered how nails were made. Today you can buy cut nails for driving into concrete.
 
If the spiral stair case was in good condition, you shot yourself in the foot for not salvaging it and selling it. I have seen some bring thousands of bucks that we salvaged from some old Victorians, back about 20 years ago when I worked for a contractor who did deconstruction and demolition work. You did not mention time period that you tore the place down.
Loren
 
(quoted from post at 19:31:11 01/16/18) Not been around blacksmiths shops but often wondered how nails were made. Today you can buy cut nails for driving into concrete.

Way back when, nails were made by cutting rods, heating the nail head area and forming the head with no more than 2 strikes...if you were good at it. Later on the nails were cut from sheet stock when shears capable of cutting 3/16" or heavier stock became common and the head was formed the same way. Then machine made nails came along and eventually the round nails we know today.
 
Old window glass is hand blown with pipe into a cylinder then cut down end to end and laid flat. Glass does not shrink. It will turn purple from the manganese or selenium the manuf put into the glass mixture. glass mixture is naturally a greenish tint and by adding manganese or selenium will end up with clear glass. After years of exposure to the ultra-violet sun rays the clear glass turned purple. The more selenium or manganese added to the mixture the more intense the purpleing.
 
The stair case was really in good condition such that a little wood finishing and carpeting or such on the steps would bring it up to near new. Problem was I had no way to deal with it at the time. I saw it as a hindrance not an asset. I left it when I quit working the place and let the owner have at it. He did ok. Got $250 ( late 1970's time line) and a lot of stuff removed that he didn't have to remove himself or pay to have done.

I built 3 (Nubian) goat houses out of my share and took the 16' full 2x8 dimensioned rafters that made up the floor of the second story and used them for a hay loft in my first barn. Started with goats, before I could afford cows. First cows occupied one of the houses also, 3 Holstein bull calves, a few days old.......that's where I learned that momma cow has the udder and spigots down low so that the calf has to suck and swallow to eat, and milk doesn't wind up in the lungs.......bottle feeding errors I made.

One thing I learned about old wood. You need to drill it to be able to nail it. On a par with Bois-De-Arc for trying to penetrate with a nail.
 

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