...Back to Cut Nail Possibilities

Metal is the backbone of many products for daily living, from the utility of knives (necessary for food prep, survival, and a whole world of uses beyond) to ornamental decoration. The knifemaker's aunt began her metalworking education with cut nails and a forge. She moved through the process of making knives from blade to sheath. She moved from making boxes for shop product to using a handheld grinder to cut old screws from crumbling deck boards. Metalworking crosses lines from carpentry to hunting to cooking. Remarkable!

Back to the cut nail project: what other ways can these nails be purposed using the metalworking knowledge attained so far?  The knifemaker's aunt now moves on to ideas for metalworking nails besides knives. She retreated to the cool of the air conditioned showroom and let out a breath of relief as she dropped down onto a stool with gel pen and paper in hand. Considering the shape of cut nails and what metal does when it is in a forge and hammered afterward, she sketched up some initial ideas.

A nail can be elongated and broadened as it is hammered. An anvil has a horn, a flat face area, and a step for right angles. With that information in mind, designs with long areas of nail that can be curved has possibilities! The fattest part of a cut nail is the head and can be broadened for a multitude of purposes.

The initial designs included simple shapes common to most craft projects: hearts, stars, 4-leaf clovers, a hook, a tree, an apple.  The point was to get a design that can be done with limited number of episodes at the forge and anvil. For example, if the nail head is broadened and hammered to a leaf shape and the nail part is elongated enough to be wrapped (hammered) around the horn tip so the end comes back to the leaf shape, it can be hammered into an apple shape.

These are refined designs from the initial ideas.

Even simple-er, is broadening the head into a leaf shape and make the elongated nail part into a hook. Put a hole through the leaf and there's a leaf hook to hang stuff upon.

Using a jig to wrap the elongated nail around while it is still red hot offers more possibilities. The knifemaker's aunt took the tree and hook ideas from the initial sketches and refined them to be simpler.

The tree can be made from 2 cut nails bent to a right angle at the bottom third of the nail at the head. A series of leaf hook can be lined up on a presentation board. The leaves will all be different anyway, so the unique view of natural leaves will look like they are waving.

It is exciting to take knowledge and work with it to make something new and original!