>
>
>> >Burning wood for nails seems impractical.
>> Steve,
>> Is your implication that Viriginian's were impractical in 1645?
>> ][<en ;-)
>
> LOL
>
> Maybe they were recovering iron in the form of nails for reuse.  Maybe
> they were recovering nails for reuse as cannon shot.  Maybe they used
> the soft nails as sinkers or even hooks when fishing.  I doubt that
> they were recovering nails for reuse as nails.

Well, as usual, BP leads me to a different thought... or thoughts as
escape may be.

Mark Rabinowitz a while back keyed me in that prior to 1712 or
thereabouts iron was made with wood fires, and thus a higher carbon
content than subsequent iron with coal fires, leastways in England. So,
if nails were made pre 1712 using wood fires, then would the burning of
a house, being made of wood, have had any appreciable effect on the
utility of the nails compared to pre-house burning? I would think also
possibly that the ratio of value nail:wood would be higher than is the
case for nails now... there had to be an optimal point at which the
nails were worth as much as the wood?

I was told an interesting bit of story today by Charlie Morgan, grandson
or such of JP Morgan regarding a metalsmith he worked for when he was
17-18 who refused to convert his forge from coal to gas. There was also
a few cute yarns about repairing PT boats. Seems Charlie Morgan spent a
good deal of his life around tradesmen, even after he became a partner
at Morgan-Stanley he was the partner in charge of construction for all
of their office spaces. Charlie also gave me some interesting
perspectives on the early Nicholson & Galloway.

Nails, salvaged nails, are in our American myth & poetics with Ezra
Pound's Cantos wherein he ties in a gold standard economic system with
some guy that saved and unbent all of his nails and in connection with
not allowing kinetic energy to go to waste etc. etc. became a
millionaire. Pound was wacko, but he buried, and I mean well buried, in
the Cantos an incredible economics that values the 100+ year approach to
building craft.

][<

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