[3] In hand-working of nails, a smith works an approximately conical iron pin tapering to a point.

In at least some metalworking traditions, nail-headers might have been identical to draw-plates (a plate bored with tapering holes of different sizes through which wire can be drawn to extrude it to increasingly fine proportions).

The Roman army, for example, left behind seven tons of nails when it evacuated the fortress of Inchtuthil in Perthshire in Scotland in 86 to 87 CE.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: "In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable.

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.

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 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.

Usually coils of wire are drawn through a series of dies to reach a specific diameter, then cut into short rods that are then formed into nails.

The nail tip is usually cut by a blade; the head is formed by reshaping the other end of the rod under high pressure.

Eventually the industry had machines capable of quickly producing huge numbers of inexpensive nails with little or no human intervention.

These crafts people used a heated square iron rod that they forged before they hammered the sides which formed a point.

[18] Today's nails are typically made of steel, often dipped or coated to prevent corrosion in harsh conditions or to improve adhesion.

Ordinary nails for wood are usually of a soft, low-carbon or "mild" steel (about 0.1% carbon, the rest iron and perhaps a trace of silicon or manganese).

Nails of different metals and colors (steel, brass, and copper) were used to create a wide variety of designs and patterns.

Nails were sometimes inscribed with incantations or signs intended for religious or mystical benefit, used at shrines or on the doors of houses for protection.