Nails are trickier to forge than you’d think, in order to make it as simple as possible I prefer using a nail header, this is one way of making such a tool. A nail header is normally hardened and given cone-shaped holes with the smaller ends facing upwards. Apart from that it can be and have been made in many other ways as well. However, this pattern was used a thousand years ago and is still so in modern forges.
The only odd thing I come to think of in this video is that I made a small hole notably smaller than the two punches I have. A pointy piece of metal allowed me to stick or poke a hole… I do not know the English verb for this technique, that way the hole became as large as I eventually grinded the headers face.
This is one of the first tools forged using a steel hammer, it is a semi-mild carbon steel slightly softer then c 45 just barely possible to harden (possibly some old SS-1650). I found it sheep on a scrapyard some twenty years ago and have used it for all sorts of hardened tools that I prefer to forge in a softer steel then the hard edge steels I use sometimes. I do not think it needs to be tempered after hardening but I did so anyway just to be safe.
The hammer used along with all other hand tools in this video where forged using stones and sticks for hammers and tongs and since I made the hammer before having a knife, axe or any other edge tools the handle was made using the local rocks and fire. This way of making handles is not ideal particularly since the difficulties of making a hole in thick steel without having any punches or chisels in my case led to a rather poor hole as well. However, the hammer works quite all right anyway. The only problem this far is how it keep moving/wiggling back and fourth in the hammers eye. The wiggling is the klick sound you hear just before each hit with the hammer… A fun tweak and interesting challenge to learn how to forge with this bug in a hammer... or is it a feature?
This is but one step closer to making a Mästermyr chest from scratch, sign up to get notified when further videos are published.