| Nail Products available with JiMiG: |
Electro galvanized steel nails;
Hot dipped zinc plated nails;
Galvanized roofing nails;
Casing nails;
Furniture nails;
Framing nails;
Concrete nails;
Common nails;
And more. |
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| Technical Common Information about Nails. |
| Sizes of Nail. Nails are mostly described by their dimensions in millimeters. A description of the head type, shank styles and finishes is typically added. |
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| Diameter |
| Several types of small nails are sized by length and wire gauge. The wire gauge used for nails is a particular version of the steel wire gauge. The bigger the number, the thinner the nail. The industry is moving away from the use of gauge numbers, to specifying the actual diameter to a thousandth of an inch. |
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| Packaging |
| Most nails are sold by weight, usually in 1-pound boxes. Some stores still offer them in bulk, to be bagged by the purchaser. Contractors purchase bulk nails in corrugated cardboard cartons holding 50 pounds. Five-pound, 10-pound, and 25-pound boxes are also sometimes available. Internationally, 5 and 10-kilogram boxes are common. |
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| The wooden nail keg of an earlier era, usually holding 100 pounds (but 150 lbs of wrought spikes or 200 lbs of boat spikes) is now rare. |
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| The entries for types of nails give the number of nails per pound for each size. From this information and the number of nails needed, the number of pounds required can be calculated. |
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| Finish |
| Bright nails have no finish. They can cause rust streaks if they are used in siding or decking, for example. |
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| A common way of making nails corrosion-resistant is to coat them with zinc. Hot-dipped (H.D.) nails have been galvanized by dipping them in molten zinc. Electrogalvanized nails are plated with zinc, and are not as corrosion-resistant as hot-dipped nails. A third process peens zinc onto the nail. By roughening the nail's surface, all these treatments – but especially hot-dipping – increase the holding power of the nail. |
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| Blued nails have very little resistance to corrosion and are meant to be used indoors. |
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| Shanks |
| Most nails have smooth shanks. |
Ring-shank nails are used with softwood, in situations where the nail will be pushed from side to side, which tends to enlarge the hole and free smooth-shank nails.
Spiral-shank nails are mostly used with hardwood. They have great holding power. |
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| Heads |
| Most nails have flat heads, in some cases very large ones. |
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| The brad head is found on finishing nails and brads. Usually it is cupped; that is, it has a small depression in the middle of the head that serves to steady a nail set. |
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| Duplex heads are used where the nail must be removed later, for example, in constructing movie sets. |
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| Points |
| Most nails have a diamond point, a 4-sided pyramid. Some however, have needle points, and a few types have a chisel point or a duckbill point. |
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