Message text written by "BP - His DNA is this long."
To the message:
>The price and quality of
>nails today don't prevent anyone from building anything they choose to
>build.
Bruce responds:
>Not so. If they choose to build a product of quality then they find an
alternative to nails. I know a contractor who builds very high-end homes up
around Bar Harbor who fastens everything but trim with screw fasteners.<

Your point here undermines your previous argument about machine-made nails
not being better. I doubt very much that the screw fasteners these
contractors are using are hand-made fasteners. 

So essentially, you just have to look at screw fasteners as an extention of
nail technology for those whose evaluation of cost/performance/value
warrants a higher degree of cost and performance. If the marketplace
clammers for a better nail, industry will provide it, because industry is
in the business of selling nails, screws, or whatever else anyone has any
use for on a significant scale.

It may even turn out, someday, that the best and most durable and most
beautiful structures of all will not even use nails, or even wood, for that
matter. A thousand years from now, maybe the invention of plastic lumber
and epoxy glue will be hailed as the dawn of a great new era in
architectural technology. (Or maybe not!)

Mike E.