Editing Nail (fastener) (section)

===Cut===
The [[slitting mill]], introduced to England in 1590, simplified the production of nail rods, but the real first efforts to mechanise the nail-making process itself occurred between 1790 and 1820, initially in England and the United States, when various machines were invented to automate and speed up the process of making nails from bars of wrought iron. Also in [[Sweden]] in the early 1700s [[Christopher Polhem]] produced a nail cutting machine as part of his automated factory.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-pgrAAAAMAAJ&q=Nailsmith | title=Christopher Polhem, the Father of Swedish Technology| last1=Teknologföreningen| first1=Svenska| year=1963}}</ref> These nails were known as ''cut nails'' because they were produced by cutting iron bars into rods; they were also known as ''square nails'' because of their roughly rectangular [[cross section (geometry)|cross section]].

The cut-nail process was patented in the U.S. by [[Jacob Perkins]] in 1795 and in England by Joseph Dyer, who set up machinery in [[Birmingham]]. The process was designed to cut nails from sheets of iron, while making sure that the fibres of the iron ran down the nails. The Birmingham industry expanded in the following decades, and reached its greatest extent in the 1860s, after which it declined due to competition from wire nails, but continued until the outbreak of World War I.<ref name=Sjögren>{{cite journal |author=G. Sjögren |title=The rise and decline of the Birmingham cut-nail trade, c. 1811–1914 |doi=10.1179/0047729X13Z.00000000016 |journal=Midland History |volume=38 |issue=1 |date=2013 |pages=36–57|s2cid=153675934 }}</ref>

Cut nails were one of the important factors in the increase in [[balloon framing]] beginning in the 1830s and thus the decline of [[timber framing]] with wooden joints.<ref>Kirby, Richard Shelton. Engineering in history. 1956. Reprint. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. 325. {{ISBN|0486264122}}</ref> Though still used for historical renovations, and for heavy-duty applications, such as attaching [[lumber|board]]s to [[masonry]] walls, ''cut nails'' are much less common today than ''wire nails''.