NAILS 



NAIRNSHIRE 



377 



remove a portion of the nail, an operation attended 

 with much pain, although quickly performed. 



Nails. The making of nails by hand has been 

 an established manufacture in the Birmingham 

 district for 300 years. Before the successful (but 

 very gradual ) introduction of mrvchine-made nails, 

 men, women, and children, to the number of 60,000, 

 were engaged in the industry. They all worked, 

 as nailers who forge nails by hand still do, in small 

 shops or sheds attached to their houses. In 1861, 

 when the number employed at this work had 

 dwindled down to 26,000, nearly one-half were 

 females. At the village of St Ninians near Stirling 

 in Scotland, where within the memory of persons 

 still living 400 hands were employed in forging 

 nj'.ils, there are now scarcely a dozen. After the 

 introduction of slitting mills into England in 1865, 

 which supplied nail-rods of the proper section to 

 nail -maker*, the trade became localised where it 

 still is and gradually prospered. Iron plates are 

 cut up into nail-rod's by a pair of slitting rolls 

 with square grooves on their surface. 



In making nails by hand, the nailer heats the 

 end of the nail-rod at his small forge, and brings it 

 into the form of the spike of a nail liy a few strokes 

 of his hammer on the anvil. It is then cut to 

 whatever length Is wanted on a chisel, leaving it 

 still attached to the rod. Dropping it next into 

 one of two holes in a ' bolster, "and detaching it 

 from the roil, the nailer forms the head from the 

 projecting end by a few more strokes of his hammer, 

 and then the nail is finished. Dies or ' swages ' 

 are required for the heads of ornamental nails. 



Nail-making machines are complicated and can 

 hardly be understood without a number of illustra- 

 tions and a lengthy description. We can only 

 name the principal parts of one for making wrought 

 nails from ' ridge" rolled iron plate, which, though 

 not of very recent design, has been much used. 

 From a strip of this sheet or plate, which has a 

 single or double ridge along its edge, the machine 

 cuts the nails i-ro^>wi*e and partially forms the 

 head of each from the ridge at right angles to the 

 spike. These cut pieces or blanks are next 

 moulded to the required form lietween suitable dies 

 or forming tools, and then other tools come into 

 play to shape and finish the heads. In this process 

 the nails are formed while the iron is heated. A 

 brief description of the machines in use at one of 

 the largest English nail works is given in the 

 Engineer, 3d Septemlr 1S.S6. 



Cut nails are made from strips of cold iron the 

 breadth of which corresponds to the length of the 

 nail, and the libre of which runs the long way 

 of the nail. In cut nails the production of shank 

 and point is done at the same time, but an 



additional operation is necessary if they require 

 to lie headed. The annexed diagram shows how 

 these nails are made without waste of material. 



Horseshoe- nails, which are formed of the best 

 charcoal iron, have hitherto been the most difficult 

 to make by machinery, but machine-made nails 

 even of this kind are now rapidly taking tin- 

 market. A very large pro|Hirtion of cut nails, as 

 well as other kinds, are now made from Bessemer 

 an.l Siemens- Martin steel, and the quality of these 

 is superior to most of the old wrought-iron nails. 

 Cast nails are also made for horticultural pur- 

 poses, and for nailing laths to hold plaster. Some 

 cast nails are annealed, and are tnen almost as 

 tough ae wrought nails. Cast nails are also made 



in brass. Wire nails, which are of French origin, 

 are made by a machine in which the end of a reel 

 of wire, while held for a moment by cam clippers, 

 receives a blow from a punch to form the head. 

 The wire is then pushed forward the length of 

 a nail and two punches advance to form the point, 

 when a ' knocker-on"' throws out the finished nail. 



Since 1889 nails have been successfully made 

 in America from tinplate scrap. This substance 

 is sheet-iron, usually of excellent quality, and its 

 coating of tin is an advantage for some, if not 

 for most kinds of nails. Moreover, scraps of it 

 accumulate in large quantity wherever tinplate 

 goods are extensively made. For one size of nail, 

 a blank of tinplate about Igth inch by |th inch is 

 crushed up or flattened edgewise into the form of 

 a nail spike much in the same way as a fan is 

 folded up ; or the blank can be rolled up into a 

 round nail. The machine for making these is the 

 invention of Mr G. H. Perkins of Philadelphia, 

 and has passed through several experimental forms. 

 It performs the cutting, crushing, gripping, and 

 heading operations. 



\ailli Tal. the summer-resort of the lien- 

 tenant-governor of the North-west Provinces of 

 India, nestles between spurs of the Himalaya, lie- 

 side a lieautiful lake 6409 feet above sea-level, 70 

 miles N. of Bareilly. By a disastrous landslip here 

 in 1880, 150 lives were lost. There is a military 

 convalescent depot. Pop. 6576, but over 10,000 

 ill the season (September). 



Nairne, CAROLINA OLIPHANT, BARONESS, 

 song-writer, was born 16th August 1766, at the 

 'auld house' of Cask in Perthshire, the third 

 daughter of its Jacobite Inird. In 1806 she married 

 her second cousin. Major William Murray Nairne 

 (1757-1830), who in 1824, by reversal of attainder, 

 hecame the sixth Lord Nairne, and to whom she 

 bore one son, William (1808-37). They settled at 

 Edinburgh, and after her husband's" death she 

 lived for three years in Ireland, then for nine on 

 the Continent, returning at last to the new house 

 of Cask the old one hail been pulled down in 

 1801. Here she died, 27th Octolier 1845. Her 

 eighty-seven songs appeared first under the 

 p.-i-iidonyin 'Mrs Bogan of Bogan ' or '11. B.' in 

 1'he Scottish Minstrel (1821-24), and posthumously 

 as Layxfrrnn Strathtam. Not a few of them are 

 mere Bowdlerisations of 'indelicate' favourites; 

 but four at least live, and shall live, with the airs 

 to which they are wedded the exquisite 'Land o" 

 the Leal' (c. 1798), and 'Caller Benin',' 'The 

 Laird o' Cockpen,' and ' The Auld House.' 



See Charles Rogers' Life and Sonpt of Lady Nairne 

 (1K69), nd T. L. Kington Olipbant's Jacobite Lairdi of 

 Gatk ( Grampian Club, 1870). 



Nairnshire. the fourth smallest county of 

 Scotland, is washed on the north for 10 miles by 

 the Moray Firth, and elsewhere bounded by Elgin 

 and Inverness shires. Till 1891 it consisted of a 

 main body, with a maximum length of 18 miles, 

 a mean breadth of 11, and an area of 169 sq. in., 

 and also of five detached portions situated in Elgin, 

 Inverness, and Ross shires, which, having a total 

 area of 31 sq. in., were annexed to Nairnshire in 

 1476, but disjoined therefrom by the Boundary 

 Commissioners in 1891. The chief rivers are the 

 Nairn and the Findhom, the former rising in Inver- 

 ness-shire, and flowing 38 miles north-eastward to 

 the Moray Firth. The surface has a generally 

 southward ascent from the fertile and well-wooded 

 laich of Moray ' near the coast, till at Cam Glas on 

 the southern boundary it attains il62 feet. Loch Loy 

 (14 '">' 1 mile) is the largest of seven small lakes. 

 Less than one-fifth of the entire area is in cultiva- 

 tion, more attention being^ paid to stock than to 

 crops. The chief antiquities are Kilravock ( 1400) 



